


Full Metal Sasquatch

by newsbypostcard



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aesthetic Porridge, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Bucky the Cryptid, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, Dirty Talk, Dracula/Sasquatch, Fake Character Death, Happy Ending, Humor, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mundane Evil, Pining, Smoking, Social Media, The Capsignal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: Bucky is walking out of Starbucks when he sees aCaptain Americasignal hanging in the sky."Uh," Bucky says, stopping dead on the sidewalk. "Huh."For one thing, he doesn't have aCaptain Americasignal.So… that seems like kind of a bad sign.*(Bucky!Cap, doing his best.)





	1. Sasquatch Meets World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cabloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabloom/gifts).



> THANK YOU to the inimitable [@cabloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabloom) for the art that inspired this piece, and the FLAWLESS banner that appears below. This has been a wonderful, breezy collab and I've enjoyed it a lot. Please [follow cabloom on tumblr](https://cabloom.tumblr.com/) and check out her gorgeous prints.
> 
> THANK YOU also to cabloom for early story feedback and to [743ish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/743ish), who has been VERY KINDLY AND PATIENTLY betaing for me on (extremely!!) short notice. Honestly, she saved my bacon this week. Thank you, 7.
> 
> This story is basically a canon divergence where Bucky picks up the mantle of Cap just so Steve can go do literally anything else with his life for a while. I don't really explain this fic's relationship to canon; I positioned it sometime after the events of Civil War.
> 
> Some suspension of disbelief is required to make this premise work, and very much is exaggerated for comedy. But we're in superhero fandom, so I feel like we're pretty good at ignoring the bounds of reality by now.

  


It was hard to remember when the whole Instagram thing started, exactly.

"They log everything," Bucky'd said, early in this whole stint of pretending he was even fine with living in America. "You know what was nice?"

"Wakanda?" Natasha guessed boredly.

"Wakanda," Bucky said. Natasha kept staring at her phone, so Bucky let his thoughts languish, eyes hanging on the dumpster, the graffiti. His coffee, at least, was bitter enough to stun his senses into forgetting the alleyway smell. "No Google," he went on, when Natasha started paying attention to him again. "No Facebook. No fucking neural network keeping tabs on your browsing just to maximize advertising revenues."

"Not that they _told_ you," Natasha corrected, but Bucky shook his head.

"It's a fundamentally different economy. Why would the Wakandan royal family want to sell information about my search for a decent pomade? No capitalism, no sale of user logs. You know what? It's the corruption that bothers me. Government and corporations are the same fuckin thing in America these days—"

Natasha rolled her eyes. "You've been talking to Steve way too much."

Bucky stared. He let the silence turn nice and awkward before opening his mouth. 

"I can't believe," he said, affecting a tightness in his throat, "that you would just _forget_ —"

"Oh, brother."

"He's barely been in the ground… for three months. And you would just—"

"No one is buying this, Barnes. You know that, right?"

"If Steve were here—God rest his soul—"

"Okay," she said, going back to her phone. "Got it. Won't bring it up again."

Bucky stalled by drinking his coffee. He'd hated Starbucks then, but he did love that their most basic coffee order tasted like corrosive waste. Reminded him of the good old days, when he'd hated society for its violence to his spirit instead of its violence to everything else. "Even if he wasn't," Bucky went on, wincing, "I wouldn't need him to tell me what's right in front of me."

"Look," she said, and held up the screen so he could look at it. "It's a cute dog."

"I hate dogs."

She scrolled to a cat. "Oooh, this cat is being stupid."

The cat _was_ being stupid. Bucky fought a fledgling smile. "I think you're missing the point."

"Which is?"

"I'm not talking about the _consumption_ of social media. Every picture you upload to a site like Instagram has your phone model, your location... You know how many shit-for-brains agents I found just from their forum presence and social media accounts over the last fifteen years?"

"You're saying that you're as stupid as them."

Bucky displayed his offense. " _No._ "

"So if you're not _stupid_ ," Natasha said slowly, "there's no reason not to post on social media."

"Were you even listening? Corporate states! Sale of data!"

Natasha shook her head and sipped whatever candy-smelling monstrosity she'd ordered this time. "I think _you're_ missing the point. You're a private citizen again. James Barnes is as dead as your husband." Bucky wasn't even sure where to start with that one. "If you turn off your location, strip metadata from your posts before you make them... you're as anonymous in this city as it's possible to be."

"Living off the _grid_ makes you as anonymous as it's possible to be."

"You know what else it makes you?" She thumbed the lipstick off the lid of her coffee and handed Bucky the cup, meeting his eyes with put-upon sincerity. "Miserable."

Bucky took the coffee and held her eye. "I'm not drinking this."

Natasha gave him a sardonic look and flipped her head upside-down. Apparently he was supposed to just play cupholder. "You know," she said, resurfacing, tying her hair back into whatever effortless ponytail 'Karen' wore, "you should really try a new drink once in a while. You're free now, Barnes. You get to try new things whenever you want."

"You think I need you to tell me that?"

"So order something else next time. _Anything_ 's better than that. That stuff dissolves pennies."

"That's the appeal."

"I know how important it is to you to stay corrosive," she said, patting his arm fondly, "but branching out is the only way you're gonna get your life back."

Bucky handed Natasha her coffee back. "My shot at a life died with Steve."

He'd meant it casually, in the same spirit as his put-upon dramatics about Steve's so-called 'death.' But it came out way more honest than he intended. Just for a second, he felt a spreading, calcifying loss cake to his ribs. 

Steve wasn't gonna be there when he got home. He'd spent a few years without him a couple times by now, but this felt...

If Natasha hadn't quite believed that Steve was dead, she could at least read his face well enough to get that there was something going on. "That's only true for as long as you let yourself believe it," she'd said, giving his arm a squeeze, and then she pinched out a smile and left him alone in Piss Alley with the world's bitterest coffee.

Bucky'd stood there a minute to feel sorry for himself, then said to hell with it and gone out to buy his first carton of cigarettes in seventy-two years. "Branching out," he'd muttered to himself, as though that justified it. In a way, it was true. Steve would never have let him take up smoking again if he was around to see it, and the so-called tobacconist didn't even have any Lucky Strikes. So in spite of Bucky's staunch insistence that his coffee be as close to flesh-eating as it was physically possible to digest, it turned out that he was about to try out something new that day after all.

  


  


***

  


  


Then Steve, of all fuckin people, opened an Instagram account.

— _Wanna see pictures of my new neighbourhood?_ Steve asked. They were still encrypting everything in those early days, before they figured out that no one really cared whether they were communicating with each other or not.

— _DON'T SEND ME ANY FILES_ , Bucky sent back in a hurry, not bothering with encryption, just to get it to him as fast as possible. _not until you learn what metadata means and how to strip it from your pictures._

— _I know what metadata means,_ came Steve's reply. Bucky could almost hear the sulk in it. _Anyway I wouldn't send files over a loose connection, I know better than that._

— _my ASS_

— _Do you want them or not?_

— _no!!!!!_

— _You didn't have to encrypt that one, Buck. It was two letters._

— _who is this buck you speak of. i am alexei_

— _Oh boy._

— _you are two-timing me?!_

— _You just remind me of some asshole I used to know. My point, Alexei, is all the pictures are posted on Instagram under the name dancingmonkey74 if you want to take a look. I'm going back in to strip all the metadata on it right now so SPARE ME the lecture._

Bucky nearly knocked over his vanilla-flavoured cola—all his 'trying new things' efforts seemed defined by their status as technically bad habits—in his haste to put 'dancingmonkey74' through a secure search engine. To his credit, Steve had used a phone that wasn't location-enabled—thank fuck _something_ had sunk in about information literacy—and, apart from the glaringly obvious self-reference in his username, he didn't seem to give any other overtly identifying information in his profile. 

He was, by all appearances, really Patrick Graham: a design student from Manhattan—God save his weary soul—living and studying in Paris.

Patrick Graham had 54 followers. Bucky spent the next hour and a bit carefully vetting every one of them. 

None seemed suspicious. Most seemed to be French design students like Steve. Bucky let his shoulders relax and took the first real breath he'd managed in an hour, then took a second to do his level best at pulling all his hair out by the roots. 

— _this is fucking stupid,_ he sent through their message chain again.

— _I know,_ Steve replied. He hadn't said anything the whole time Bucky was panic-vetting, probably on account of knowing him too well. _Do you like my plant? I named him after you._

He was referring to a tall, knobby succulent he'd taken a moody shot of near a rain-streaked window.

— _i like it,_ Bucky wrote. The lighting was good, or whatever.

Steve sent back a grinning emoji. Bucky stared at it for a stupidly long time, imagining Steve's floppy yellow hair sitting on top of it.

While Bucky was still staring, Steve sent: _You can get notified every time I post if you make an account._

Bucky sent: _fat chance. i better not catch you posting selfies on this thing, or so help me i will come and i will find you, and not in a way you'll like._

— _I'm not that stupid,_ wrote Steve. _Besides, it's a normal thing to have social media. Natasha told me it'd be weirder if I didn't._

Natasha had a point.

— _you in touch with natasha?_

That reply had taken a while. 

— _I meant before,_ Steve finally wrote.

Bucky's stomach sank. God, he was dumb as shit sometimes. He'd tapped out a quick apology, then thrown the laptop away from him. It'd been four months without Steve by then; if the loss still felt raw to Bucky, he couldn't imagine how bad it must have been for Steve. Bucky may not have loved coming back stateside to take over the role of Captain America, but at least he'd had support in doing it. 

Steve, on the other hand, was in cover alone. That was the whole idea, of course; it was what they'd decided, in the twenty arguments it had taken them to reach a decision. If they were going to sell the idea, that's how it was gonna have to stay: Steve Rogers was dead. Any single leak meant more liability for everyone involved.

So: no-contact with everyone. Or... almost everyone. Steve had lasted all of three weeks incommunicado before sending Bucky the first message over the encrypted channel, and they'd talked almost daily since. Bucky had a good enough idea of where Steve was and what he was studying—and that was already too much goddamned information. It was too risky to be talking at all, let alone to be sharing this much info about their lives, and yet neither one of them seemed able to curb their impulses to stay in touch. 

It wasn't so much that Bucky was worried about Steve being detected. With the level of detail they'd gone to for the sake of fabricating his death, it didn't seem likely anyone would even look. More worrying was Steve's connection with Bucky. All the VPNs and encryption protocols in the world didn't change the fact that Bucky, albeit under the Captain America name, was suddenly making himself a high-profile figure again. He was doing it specifically to draw attention _away_ from Steve, which kind of opposed the purpose of their clandestine message server. 

If the world at large figured out who was newly behind the Captain America mask, it wouldn't have been a far reach to look for Steve after all. But no amount of Bucky telling himself he was being egregiously fucking stupid every time he sent a message to Steve did anything to stop him from doing it. No amount of telling Steve he was stupid for messaging him in the first place achieved much, either. 

Falling in love again had been the mistake. But there was nothing much to be done about that now.

— _Don't worry about it,_ Steve wrote back.

Bucky sighed at the screen a while before finally replying: _someone's got to._

Having maybe decided that Patrick Graham was a guy who used emojis as well as Instagram, Steve sent back a smiling face, followed by: a fistbump; two pink hearts; a frowning face with a single tear; and two men holding hands. 

Bucky's stomach twisted. God, he loved that dumb bastard.

— _stop,_ he wrote. And Steve did stop, and Bucky regretted it for the whole next five hours as he watched Patrick Graham's 122 Instagram pictures get slowly taken down and then reuploaded, one after another, newly without metadata. There was the Eiffel Tower; there was the Pyramide du Louvre; there went foggy morning after foggy morning, rainy day after rainy day. There wasn't a soul in a single one of them, lest the people looking for Steve mistake strangers for people he knows; he was careful enough. Steve was almost always careful enough. 

But there was Bucky the cactus, sitting alone in Steve's bedroom window. Standing eternal and prickly vigil. Doing the job that Bucky should've done.

  


  


***

  


  


Not too long later, Bucky caved. He made his own godforsaken Instagram account. No one even made him do it.

It wasn't like he posted anything. Not at first. He followed 29 accounts posting photos of New York; @dancingmonkey74; @karebeartakesnewyork—which was apparently part of Natasha's new cover, to Bucky's incredulity—and a bunch of feeds of cats doing stupid things. 

That was it. He got pinged every time Steve made a post, which gave him little dumps of dumb affection once a day or so. He started to look forward to pictures of that stupid cactus. 

Still. The Instagram experience did inspire a few questions.

"Why are you always posting pictures of your breakfast on the internet?" he asked Natasha during one of their daily caffeine-nicotine infusion hours. "Why is it always porridge? Nobody needs to eat porridge in 2018. I used to eat porridge every morning and I got so sick of it I'd bring it to Steve."

"You brought Steve your castoffs?" she asked, but then she seemed to realize the implications of what he was asking. "Hang on—are you talking about _Karen's_ Instagram?"

"I'm talking about _your_ Instagram."

"It's Karen's."

"You're Karen."

"Please. I'd never post a picture of oatmeal."

Bucky gave her a dubious look and took a drag from his cigarette. "Well, then, can you ask Karen if there's an Instagram setting for 'I don't want to see or be seen by foods from the Great Depression'?"

"You're not _following_ me on Instagram," Natasha accused, eyes narrow.

"No," Bucky said, but then muttered the rest, self-hatingly, into the empty alley. "Apparently I'm following _Karen_ on Instagram."

Natasha stared a second in disbelief. Then, with the sort of speed usually reserved for getting out of danger in a hurry, she'd unlocked her phone and was scrolling furiously through her list of followers. "What's your handle?"

Rather than reply, Bucky elected to burn through the rest of his cigarette on a single inhale. God, he was getting sloppy.

"Midtown Wallflower?" Natasha guessed, ignoring his pointed silence. "Highline Assassin?"

"You really think I'd register under a Manhattan handle? Do you know me at all?"

She narrowed her eyes again and glared. "You're not... _Brooklyn Sasquatch._ "

"Photo of three blueberries in the middle of a bowl of granular mush gets 105 likes a day. Fucking obscene."

"It's aesthetic porridge."

Bucky turned to her like she'd committed treason. " _Aesthetic porridge_?"

"Karen likes aesthetic porridge," she said neutrally.

Bucky shook his head. "Sometimes I think you take your covers too far."

"I've been burned enough times," she said, shoving her phone in his face. "You _are_ Brooklyn Sasquatch."

Unfortunately, he was. He'd lasted six whole months as Cap before someone had managed to recognize him on the street—as Cap, thank _god_ , and not as James Buchanan Barnes—ostensibly just from the line of his jaw. 

Bucky'd started growing out his beard the very same day. He'd taken to the state of overgrowth surprisingly quickly, shaving only when he had to suit up as Cap, and even then usually only begrudgingly. It wasn't like maintaining a crisp image had been among his priorities over the last few years, but letting his bodily growth subdue him into literal, physical obscurity carried a certain appeal. Retaliation, maybe, against years of undue fucking military expectations.

"I look like a Neanderthal had progeny with a sheepdog," he'd reported to Steve the first time he'd grown it out. Steve had finally worn him down on whether a phone call was safe enough run through Signal, and Bucky was enjoying being able to fuss with his hair and hear Steve's voice in his ear at the same time.

"All I'm hearing," said Steve, "is that you managed to get sexier."

Bucky laughed. It felt weird to smile; felt weirder to see himself do it. "Well, you're not wrong. What do they call it? Am I a... bear now?"

Steve made a sound crossed between dread and interest. "Oh, _God._ "

"You think I can get body hair going if I try hard enough?"

"Yeah, what's that about?"

"God only knows."

It was weird, in a way, having regular conversations with Steve without either of them ever talking about what they did in their day-to-day lives. No identifying details; they'd agreed on that much. Already Bucky'd had to plead with him to take down a couple Instagram photos that Bucky had been able to place on Google maps just from landscape details, and those conversations became tiresome enough that Steve complied with his requests just to stop Bucky from complaining.

Bucky had no idea if Steve was standing or sitting when they talked. He had no idea what his apartment looked like, which arrondissement he lived in, if he was even actually living in Paris. He'd only peripherally allowed himself to figure out that it was late evening in France and that Steve's voice was probably quiet because he was sleepy, since Steve had alluded in passing, months ago, to being an early riser. 

Bucky'd filed that information away into the trap of his mind without choosing it. Now, uncluttered by other knowledge about Steve's life, the fact occurred to him almost hourly. Every time it started getting dark, every time Bucky was himself getting sleepy, every time he glanced at his phone or his inbox and mentally tacked six hours onto the current time, Bucky was left remembering that Steve was a morning person and that he was probably either awake or asleep at that particular moment.

It felt dangerous. Bucky buzzed with anxiety every time he even thought of him. Every shred of information he had on Steve felt dangerous to carry, and yet there was never the slightest chance Bucky would have given up anything about him. Bucky told himself this every time he felt guilty for remembering something about Steve's life, every time he sent another message; every time he waited for his phone to ping with that custom ringtone, _So,_ in Steve's voice, taken from one of those PSAs that didn't represent his life at all.

"People might take notice if you turn into a literal bear," Steve said, smooth and warm. His voice was rumbling; relaxed. It was past ten at night over there. He must have been getting ready for sleep.

Bucky curled his fingers over the edge of the counter. Maybe this phone thing really was a mistake. "Yeah," he said, trying to forget how much the roll of Steve's voice felt to him like home. "But they'd _definitely_ never find me if I turned into another species."

"Always the optimist."

"Yeah, Pat, you know me."

Steve groaned. "Don't call me that. No one who knows enough to tap our phone conversations is gonna be fooled by 'Pat'."

It was sound logic, but Bucky was too joyed by Steve's annoyance to let it go. "You just had to stick with the Irish thing."

"You chose it for me!"

That much was true. But if you asked Bucky, Pat was short for Patriot.

"Besides," Steve went on. "I might be able to hide being Steve Rogers, but I can't pretend I'm not Irish."

Bucky flinched. "Oh, god, please don't use your full name."

"Steven," Steve said, directly against the receiver, "Grant Rogers."

Then Bucky had hung up, and Steve had sent half a dozen plaintive messages asking Bucky to call back, and by the time he remembered to encrypt them and Bucky actually _did_ call back, Steve had already come up with new ways to torment him. Steve went on to ignore every single one of Bucky's attempts to make him feel like an asshole for not following _basic protocols of security_ , instead dirty-talking him about all of his hair, and from there any pretense of civil conversation went out the window and devolved into a long-distance jerk-off.

Given that nothing bad happened after such a catastrophe of a conversation, Bucky was only about a hair's breadth from actually sending Steve a photo of his face-jungle to see what other filthy nonsense he could get Steve to say about it. Sex aside, it really was just a spectacle. He was a forest unto himself. The serum seemed to be boosting his hair growth at a pace that even he hadn't expected. At this rate, he must have been on his way to becoming the eighth wonder of the world.

So @BklynSasquatch, if begrudgingly, was born.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bucky said to Natasha, hiding behind his coffee.

"Brooklyn and cats, huh?" she said, scrolling through his follows.

"I'm a complicated man of simple tastes."

But as he stared across the alleyway in a state of growing existential malaise, he realized how incredibly careless he'd been. If Natasha was looking at his follow list, she was definitely going to notice that he only followed two real people. One of them was Karen. And the other one was...

He tried to snatch the phone out of her hand before Natasha realized his wide-eyed despair, but somehow she managed to see it coming and snapped her hand out of his reach. "Whoa!" she shouted, holding her phone in the air. "Settle down, Sasquatch!"

"Just give me a second—"

"You got a secret, Barnes?"

"Gotta unfollow _one_ account, Romanoff, I'm begging you, and then you can make as much fucking fun of me as you—"

"Which account is that?" She held Bucky at bay with one hand, the other scrolling down the list. There was no way she'd be able to hold him off for long, but she seemed content to rely on the tenuous premise that he wasn't prepared to suplex her into a dumpster. "Cats-of-world?"

"Romanoff..."

" _Smoothie_ the cat!"

"If Wakanda taught me anything, it's a healthy respect for cats. Give me the _fucking phone_ —"

"Brooklyn... cats... Brooklyn _cats_... ooh, Manhattan!"

"You discovered my secret. I like Manhattan. Now hand it—" Bucky smacked her arm to the side and tried to snatch the phone, but she twisted her arm away and managed to use Bucky's shoulder as leverage to perform some kind of Black Widow kick-flip off the dumpster. She landed behind him. Bucky turned to see her grinning like the Cheshire Cat, still scrolling through his follows, and that was how they almost recreated the events of Odessa in a Brooklyn alleyway playing keep-away with Natasha's phone.

Bucky won in the end, Natasha's phone meeting an untimely end under the heel of his boot after he'd caught it during one of her impossibly showy throw-and-catch maneuvers while launching herself over his head, and he'd had to shell out for a new one—a considerably more expensive one, plus a godawful strawberry latte thing to make up for his victory—but it was worth it. In the thirty seconds Natasha had looked away to cheerfully examine her new shiny hellcomputer, Bucky had randomly followed a minimum of two hundred other accounts, unfollowing and re-following Steve along the way, thus losing dancingmonkey74 among a sea of randos who also happened to post pictures of rainy days and cacti in France.

Knowing Natasha, the ruse probably hadn't been enough. She'd probably identified Steve within minutes of parting, not least because of his _terrible_ and _obvious_ self-reference in the handle. 

Still. Even if Bucky's timeline had become completely insufferable in the process, Natasha's inability to take no for an answer had at least tightened loops in his careless security. Her incorrigible snooping had probably ultimately done him a favour.

  


  


***

  


  


Unfortunately for Bucky, his following spree somehow got him followers back.

"What do I do with this?" he'd asked Steve, scrolling one-handed while exerting the least amount of effort possible in holding up his arm.

"Do you have to do anything?" Steve asked, muffled by a toothbrush.

"It's starting to look weird that I'm just following people with such niche content without posting anything. Romanoff was right; you gotta use social media the way it's intended or you're gonna stand out."

"Don't tell me you're gonna start posting cacti and cats."

"No," Bucky scoffed. "I'm clearly a Brooklyn 'grammer."

"A Brooklyn what now?"

It was pushing 1:00am; Bucky was still in his Cap uniform, minus the mask, miserably contemplating how many days it was gonna be before his beard would grow back. He was tired. He was slipping up. He was already missing his preferred Starbucks location, reserved for the Sasquatch so the staff didn't recognize him, the Captain America Starbucks inferior in every way. "Ignore me," Bucky muttered, exhausted. "Talking to Natasha too much."

"She supportive?"

"Of—what, my Instagram? You think I'd ask _her_ for _advice_ on _social media_?" He shook his head. "I can handle this. Brooklyn's in the handle; pictures of Brooklyn are relevant."

"Sasquatch is in the handle, too. You plan to start posting pictures of yourself around Brooklyn, make it like that traveling teddy bear thing?" 

He'd said it with mockery in his voice, but Bucky embarrassed himself by taking the suggestion seriously. There was a lot of potential in constructing a mythology for himself that had nothing to do with his past or present jobs. It did take him the better part of two years to work up enough nerve to actually post a picture of himself, but even so, his Brooklyn-oriented strategy and knack with Photoshop meant that the Brooklyn Sasquatch racked up hundreds of thousands of followers by the time he did. 

It was an instant hit. The Sasquatch went viral in a matter of hours. To his own ongoing embarrassment, Bucky kinda loved the process involved in building the Sasquatch persona up from the ground. He had a _posting schedule._ He kept spreadsheets on retention patterns. He knew that he tended to lose followers when he _didn't_ post asinine captions with his asinine photos, and that, after he posted his face for the first time, his follower count had shot up so fast that he'd been beholden to post more or risk losing his following.

People _loved_ photos of coffee, but they loved them more when Bucky attached some commentary to it about how life is like a triple-chocolate mochaccino. Throw in a shot of him in the sun, run it through eight thousand filters until facial-recognition software no longer picked up the edges of his face, and the begrudged account he'd made just to get notified whenever Steve posted pictures of plants had somehow, without Bucky's realizing, turned into a full-blown hobby that Bucky undertook with the care and precision of a trained operative stalking his mark.

"Did you actually just put a picture of your face online?" Steve had asked in lieu of greeting the first time Bucky had posted a selfie.

Bucky, however, had sat up in bed, too distracted by the look of him to respond. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I figured you wouldn't _care_ if I Facetimed you, given that you just posted a _picture_ of _yourself_ on the _internet_!"

"I'm talking about the man you killed whose face you apparently stole!"

Steve waved a hand, eyes closing. "It's my cover."

"It sure is something!"

"You're one to talk."

No matter what Steve had to say about the fact that Bucky seemed to be regressing through time into the ape from whence he evolved, Bucky had not—unlike Steve—dyed every single goddamn hair on his face.

"Are you a chimney sweep?" Bucky asked. "Did the ghost of Patrick past take you over and change your appearance? What is this?"

"You said we weren't giving each other identifying details, or I'd have told you. Every time I tried, you tried to bury me in cursing—which seems hypocritical to me now, by the way, given that you—"

"One thing at a time! Is your hair always that short?"

"Yeah, it is! This is how Patrick _looks_ , Buck, it's how I've looked for two years. Citing my appearance as scandalous when you're sitting there, a bona fide cryptid—"

A smile tugged at Bucky's mouth. God, he'd missed the way Steve's eyebrows knit in the middle when he got going. "Cryptid, huh?"

Steve faltered into silence. Bucky blinked at him, licking his lips against his stubborn smile.

"Sexy cryptid," Steve murmured.

Bucky coughed a laugh. "Didn't I say?"

"I said, actually. Glad you didn't disappoint."

"It was always a risk, but I kinda depended on your ability to get off on the thought of me as a Sasquatch as a relative given."

Patrick still blushed like Steve Rogers, at least. "Jesus, Buck."

Then it seemed to sink in that it was the first time they'd seen each other in two years. 

Two goddamned years of encrypted messages and telephone calls and there, finally, was proof Steve was there. Suddenly Bucky understood why Steve's first instinct on seeing his face on Instagram had been to pick up the phone and see his face some more. 

"Hi," Bucky rasped, tipping over in bed.

"Hi," Steve said back, smiling and shy. He'd lain down on the sofa and held his phone there, like Bucky was lying there beside him; Bucky did the same. Then they both hung on the airwaves in silence, getting used to each other again, Bucky taking note of the way Steve's eyelashes were still blond; the way he wore coloured contacts that probably also obscured his retinae from scans. He was still soft around the eyes. Under all that Patrick still lived Steve Rogers.

"Maybe I should go blonde," Bucky'd muttered at last. Steve's whole face had lit up when he laughed, and so Bucky hadn't wasted time regretting his frankly stupid decision to post a photo of himself on Instagram.

After that, he and Steve started to Facetime daily. Bucky kept posting to Instagram. Then, forced to face the fact that this was his new life whether he liked it or not, Bucky registered the Sasquatch's face with the government under the name of William Yves.

Bucky had way more hair and muscle mass than the real Yves ever had, even before Yves had been blown off his feet in Italy in 1943. It'd just been one of those names that had never left his head, lodged in his memory beside his own serial number. Yves had been the type to stop at a tree, after the rains let up and the water dripped free, just to feel the texture of leaves between his forefinger and thumb as they drank in the sun, like he'd never seen a tree before. Like he'd never see another one again. 

It fucked Bucky up to remember how he'd smacked the kid's hand and shoved him forward, scolding him on how crawling across a battlefield was good way to get killed. Two months later, Yves died just like that: crawling across a battlefield. It was one of those prophecies Bucky'd wished he'd never told. Yves' name stuck with him after sleepless nights spent wondering if Bucky'd willed his death into being just by saying it aloud. Knowing that it was crazy. Convinced he'd done it anyway.

If Bucky hadn't been able to save Yves' life then, maybe he could give his name some kind of new life now. Bucky took pictures of flowers in spring and leaves in autumn and posted them with stupid captions while living under Yves' name. He thought, maybe, if Yves had had the slightest idea what Instagram was or the kind of bullshit Bucky was posting to it every day, he might have been proud that his name was attached to beautiful things; that, in some small way, everyone who liked a picture of blooming life liked the same things as him. That this was how Bucky communicated with Steve, the stupid love of his stupid life, nearly a hundred years later and three and a half thousand miles apart. That Bucky stopped and felt the leaves in spring, and thought of Steve and Yves and every other gorgeous thing.

  


  


***

  


  


The point was that, regardless of the purity of Bucky's intentions—or lack of intentions, as the case may be—the whole Instagram thing was pretty obviously positioned to fuck up his life from the start. 

Not that he thinks about that much anymore. Today he stands outside his Sasquatch Starbucks, drinking their latest caffeine-sugar hell concoction after four glorious weeks passed without once needing to suit up as Captain America. He scrolls through Instagram without thinking about it, making mental notes about which posts fared better—springtime, it seems, is a pretty big hit. The growth on his face has finally grown back to a respectable state of sentience for the first time in a while, and Bucky entertains himself by spinning on the sidewalk, coffee and cigarette poised in one hand and his phone in the other, trying to find the best possible angle for a selfie that casts his face in enough shadow without completely obscuring his features.

He figured out a long time ago that the more weird shit he does with a sufficiently high-priced phone in his hand, the more he blends in. Bucky's gotten into the habit of rotating humiliating rituals daily just to keep his cover intact. 

God bless filters. God bless New York. Even when he does get recognized by the occasional Instagram follower, Bucky—inspired by Steve's faux-outrage at the look of him—makes like a cryptid and employs every reasonable measure to disappear from sight within the next five seconds. 

Apart from increasing his follower count, his dedication to the image of an unphotographable urban sasquatch also has the benefit of keeping his Winter Soldier skills sharp. Repurposing the assassin shit for his Instagram hobby feels weirdly okay. It's the furthest thing from what the Soviets intended, so if he has to make use of indoctrinated skills, using them to avoid being photographed as a ridiculous bigfoot version of himself somehow makes it palatable.

So far the only image anyone else has snapped of him as been so blurry as to be plausibly deniable. Being a cryptid has turned out to be actually kind of a genius cover. Bucky isn't sure why he hadn't thought of becoming a sasquatch earlier.

Deciding he's got enough selfie angles to choose from, Bucky scans around and sets down the sidewalk. Natasha probably isn't going to show up. It's a crapshoot these days. She's busy with something involving Nick Fury that Bucky neither wants to know about nor wishes was happening at all, but the fewer questions he asks, the better off they both are. "Karen" hasn't been burned yet either, which means she also has to juggle her day job as an executive assistant—something Bucky's also figuring out isn't so much cover to protect her own life as it is an infiltration.

He hasn't asked about that either. Briefly he almost worked up the courage, but then he thought about how Natasha deadpanned about killing anyone who knew what she was doing. Given how their play fights tend to go, Bucky doesn't really want to have a real one. It's not because he doesn't think he can win; it's just because he isn't _sure_ that he could, and also because he really, really doesn't want to have a falling out with Natasha. Pushing three years as Captain America and Bucky still hasn't exactly gotten better at making friends.

So: no more caffeine-nicotine infusion hour, or at least not so often. Bucky still values the ritual for himself, but he knows when to cut his losses. He's got shit to do this morning anyway.

That's when he turns the corner and sees the _Captain America_ signal hanging in the sky.

"Uh," Bucky says, stopping dead on the sidewalk, phone balancing precariously in his hand. "Huh."

For one thing, he doesn't have a _Captain America_ signal.

So… that seems like kind of a bad sign.

He stares. Other people are staring; that justifies his stupefication. He looks between the signal, his phone, and his coffee and cigarette, and tries to slot his priorities in order.

He should really go investigate, except for how it's clearly a trap. He could call Wilson for reinforcements, but then he'd be asking Sam to go into the trap on his behalf. He could leave it alone and hope that it's nothing—maybe it's the early hour or the fact that he hasn't fully caffeinated yet, but he can't seem to figure out what possible reason someone would have to bait him into a fight when he's won every altercation except against the Avengers over the last five years.

Unless it's Hydra.

It's probably not Hydra.

It... _could_ be Hydra.

Bucky'd been having such a nice day.

Turning on his heel away from the Capsignal, he goes back to his apartment. He'll have to suit up and shave. Farewell, Brooklyn Sasquatch. Bucky'd have to pull out some archived photos to generate content over the next couple weeks.

  



	2. Sasquatch v. The People

  


Natasha's waiting for him outside his building. That's not a good sign, either.

"You break in already or what?" By now Bucky's annoyance has sunk in completely.

"I tried, but your security was too good."

He rolls his eyes. "Save your flattery for a day I'm more likely to buy it."

"My. Aren't we cranky."

Bucky unlocks the door and looks at her. "I have to shave." He shoulders his way inside.

"Why?"

"Capsignal."

"What?"

He gestures to the window of the hallway as they pass. Natasha leans to look outside. "Oh." She cocks her head. "Huh."

"That's what I said." He shoots her a suspicious look. "You didn't see it?"

"No, I—" She pauses. "I was underground."

"What, literally?"

"Neither here nor there. You looking into this?"

"Who else is gonna do it?"

"By yourself."

"Seems like."

"So—just so I'm clear—you're walking directly _into_ what is clearly a trap."

"Yup."

Natasha just nods. 

Bucky kicks the sticking door ajar. "You gonna offer to help?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"It's not the Black Widow signal."

Bucky grunts and throws his keys on the counter. "You gonna tell me about your job someday?"

"Maybe."

"It's keeping you busy."

"These things do."

"What things?"

"You know what you need?" Natasha deflects, taking the coffee out of his hand.

"A vacation?"

"To get laid." She throws herself into the nearest chair as Bucky groans his annoyance. "One thing goes wrong and your mood goes to hell."

"That's always been true."

"It is demonstrably less true when you're seeing more of Steve."

Bucky winces. "Do we need to go over this again? Steve died. Saving the world."

"That's so sad."

"Come to think of it, that's how he died both times." He turns on the bathroom light and starts fishing his clippers out of the drawer. "Bastard never does anything halfway. Here I am, trying to preserve his pristine legacy..."

"His legacy's hardly pristine."

"It's a hell of a lot better than mine."

"And I think it is so _cute,_ " Natasha says, drinking deeply of his coffee, "that you're trying to reconcile your image with his by shooting people in the leg and being caustic on the internet."

"I'm not caustic on the _internet,_ " Bucky says. "I am perfectly authentic with all 600,000 of my followers."

"The Sasquatch is authentic?"

"He's _so_ authentic. He's the most authentic part about me."

"My mistake." 

Bucky barely hears her over the trimmers. "Gotta take a fuckin break now, though, don't I?" He takes a long strip of hair off his cheek. "One of these days someone's gonna figure out that Brooklyn Sasquatch stops posting every time Captain America shows up."

"So vary your patterns."

"What am I, an amateur? There's a queue."

"So you're just complaining for complaining's sake."

"I dunno if you've noticed, but that's kinda my—"

Bucky stops. He stares at himself in the mirror, letting the trimmers run in his hand.

"Would Hydra kill a random guy," Bucky says slowly, turning to Natasha, "with 600,000 Instagram followers, who walked into their trap just to see what was going on… if there were dozens of people standing outside?"

"Would—" She tips her head. "Do you think the Capsignal is Hydra?"

"Dunno who else would bait me so overtly."

"Kinda obvious for Hydra."

"Kinda obvious for anyone. Not sure what the hell they think they're…" But he trails off, pieces sliding into place. "They're attracting a crowd... on _purpose_. They want publicity?" He turns the clippers off and throws them on the counter. "I'll give 'em publicity."

"Are you going to investigate this… as the Sasquatch?"

"Covert ops, Romanoff. Maybe you've heard of it."

"You've got a single strip of hair shaved off your face, there, champ."

Bucky looks at himself in the mirror, then turns the trimmer back on and does the same thing on the other side. "The secret to style is symmetry."

"Wow. Better post that on Instagram before you go, trendsetter."

"You think?"

Natasha just looks at him. Bucky makes a harsh noise in his throat and throws the clippers back down again. "I assume you wanted in here for a reason," he says, heading to pick up his keys.

"Looking for you." 

Bucky knows better. She's probably looking for a place to lie low for a while, away from whatever fuck-up happened this morning. "Just lock up before you go."

She hums her assent. "Call for backup if you need it?"

"I'll call Sam."

"Okay." 

It takes Bucky until he's halfway down the hall, but then he spins back inside and recovers his coffee from Natasha's python grip. "Get your own," he growls, stepping out again.

"Hmm," says Natasha, as Bucky slams the door behind him for a second time. "See if you can get laid while you're out there!"

  


  


***

  


  


Bucky's bad mood isn't Natasha's fault. It's not even really the fault of this Capsignal situation. It's that, unwittingly or otherwise, Natasha hit the nail on the head.

Bucky's not getting laid. 

He and Steve haven't been connecting properly for weeks. It's not for lack of trying; they're talking almost as much as they used to— _almost_ being the operative word, their calls occasionally going unanswered. Specifically, Bucky's calls to Steve are going unanswered. Which is fine. When they do talk, everything is more or less normal: constant flirtation, talking circles around their lives, watching the same movie an ocean apart. 

They just can't fuckin get their dicks to work to save their lives.

"Hmm," Steve said once, after a period of silence had failed to result in a segue into sex. "Are we feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," Bucky muttered, face buried into a pillow. "Dunno about you."

"I'm fine. Just… tired."

"I'm not tired," Bucky said, eyes closing.

"Are we getting old?"

"We were old to start with."

"That doesn't sound like me."

"Just because you go to school now," Bucky rasped, "doesn't mean you magically went back in time. You're old, sweetheart."

"Nah, we're just tired."

"I have never been tired," Bucky said, actively drifting off, "in my life."

"Mhm," Steve said, unmistakably fond. "I'll call you again tomorrow." 

But even when he had, all the dirty talk had still fallen flat. It had fallen flat the next day, too, and the day after that, and then Steve hadn't picked up for two whole days, which was when it started either falling flat as a matter of principle or else not coming to them at all.

It got into Bucky's head. They just kept... missing each other. It was bound to happen eventually. They live separate lives; that was the whole _point_. That they're even making this much work—that they have done for three years—is a miracle in itself. 

It's just that, even when they're looking each other right in the face, it feels like…

Like they're drifting apart.

"Buck," Steve finally said, after three weeks of Bucky's steadfast avoidance of conversation or feelings. "Is there something going on?"

"Fucking nothing. I'm almost _bored_. I think evil is out enjoying the spring weather."

Steve stared. "You know what I mean."

Of course the deflection hadn't worked. Bucky rubbed his hands together, then finally sighed and resigned himself to it. "I dunno," he said, slow. "Is there something going on... with you?"

"With me? No. Like what?"

Bucky stared, torn between accusation and sheepishness. Steve just cocked an eyebrow. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"No, I just…" Bucky shook his head. "Forget it."

"No, let's talk it out."

"We can't." That whole 'no personal details' policy was really starting to bite him in the ass. "Let's not and say we did."

Steve sat silent for a long time. He looked at Bucky and then to the ceiling, shaking his head like Bucky was doing something unforgivable. "Are you worried that I'm breaking cover," he finally asked, patience thin as film, "or having an affair?"

Bucky flinched, hiding his face in his hands. "Nothing. Neither."

"So both."

"Can we leave it alone?"

"Bucky—look at me." 

It took him a few seconds, but Bucky did. Steve was staring at him with an inscrutable intensity, the coloured contacts muting the shine of his eyes. "I am not about to break cover," he said, slowly, "and I am sure as hell not cheating on you. I'd die before I hurt you like that. I'm not about to jeopardize my life here, Bucky, not after everything you've done for me." He dropped his gaze, as though suddenly sorry. A wrenching longing ripped through Bucky without warning. "Not more than we already do."

The problem with loving a man who felt guilty about everything was that Bucky could never tell exactly what he was feeling guilty about. Steve's contrition made him softer; made Bucky soft just as fast.

"Don't listen to me." Bucky rubbed a hand against his own cheek, then scanned his other thumb against the screen, like he could feel Steve's dark-stubbled jaw if he only tried hard enough. "I just… I miss you, Rogers. That's what it comes down to. It makes me stupid."

"I don't want you to think—"

"I don't." It almost sounded true. "Just let me pine a little, I'll be alright."

Steve studied him a little too long, mouth pressing thin, brow contorted with too much for Bucky to identify. "What if—"

"No."

"Just a visit."

"Don't you dare. It's not on. You get pinged—"

"I don't care."

"I do!" Bucky meant to sound mad, but his throat gave out on him. The notion of seeing him, of being able to put his hands to Steve's skin, was enough for his body to betray three years of missing him at once. "We're too far in this to give up now. You got a year left at least. Finish your degree. Do that at the _very_ least, and then maybe we can _talk_ about—"

"Bucky," Steve said, his voice just as rough.

"Don't." Bucky pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Promise you won't. It's not that fucking dire, I don't have enough going on. That's all. I miss you and I'm bored, so I'm fabricating bullshit to get het up about. The solution to this problem is for me to find a new hobby that isn't evil or… social media."

Steve looked at him a long time, stupid blonde eyelashes glowing from the lamp. "Chaotic evil and corporate evil somehow not keeping you busy?" he said, dry.

Bucky's smile was at least halfway genuine that time. "You'd think they would."

"Sounds like you're slacking off over there."

"You know me," said Bucky. "Couch potato."

Natasha's evasiveness just reminds Bucky of everything Steve doesn't want to admit to. Bucky hasn't dismissed the idea that Steve's lying out of some misguided interest in Bucky's so-called protection, and so naturally the idea has taken up a massive chunk of real estate in his brain at all hours of the day. 

He expects this kind of behavior from Nat, but from Steve, it's… well. The last time Steve tried to hide something from Bucky, he was trying to sign up for a war.

Some quiet, incomprehensible part of Bucky hopes he's lying about the other thing instead, that Steve's just moving on. That he's got someone to keep him warm at night. It's hard to see a solution for their relationship when the problem is an intractable distance. The Atlantic's broken them up before; there's no reason it shouldn't try it again. 

The whole point of this horrible plan was not to bury each other in their respective baggage. Steve was _supposed_ to get freedom—from a lot of things. From Bucky, too. Like fools staring into a sun that would blind them, they'd dragged each other along this far regardless. 

There has to come a point when the bending breaks. Maybe they're just feeling the spread of those spiderlike cracks.

  


  


***

  


  


The Capsignal, depressingly, is a gigantic sheet of cheesecloth with the Cap shield printed on it. Reds, whites, blues—old style. Much more an homage to Steve than to Bucky, but Bucky's what they're gonna get.

How the hell the wind hasn't punched through it by now is one of the world's great mysteries. Bucky's not inclined to dwell. The warehouse the cheesecloth is being kited out of has, as Bucky expected, attracted a crowd. Tourists to locals to professional bloggers, some cops, and some much more shady customers trying to blend in like citizens have gathered by the warehouse's door, apparently just to see whether or not Captain America is going to answer the call.

It occurs to Bucky, as he spots a reporter from some Brooklyn rag among the crowd, that this might get spun in such a way to implicate _Bucky_ for the absurd display. Given that Captain America's become so much more enigmatic since Steve "died," the media has been all too happy to jump on any shred of information that might indicate Bucky's identity. It wouldn't even be much of a leap for the media to try to spin the Capsignal off as Bucky's own publicity stunt. Left unchecked, this whole situation could easily have adverse effects on Bucky's ability to do his job unfettered. 

Bucky's ultimately glad he had the foresight not to suit up after all. He takes out his phone and starts snapping pictures of the warehouse, like everybody else, except for how he's mumbling profanities under his breath. The cheesecloth, at the very least, provides a distraction. Bucky moves around the warehouse, photographing all the while, until he's snuck unseen from prying eyes.

Noisily, he pulls aside the wall panel with his prosthetic arm and slips inside without anyone noticing. The interior is… well, it's sparse. And it's certainly informative. 

It's not Hydra who's baiting him. 

It's a bunch of fucking college students.

That's what it sounds like, anyway, without his having much of a visual. The voices arguing above him are young; they could just as well be Buzzfeed. Through the aerated grate above him, Bucky can make out an office setup on an elevated platform: desks and chairs, and at least six pairs of feet. 

Bucky takes in as much of the scene as he can without drawing attention to himself. By the warehouse's only real door stand three different cameras, positioned at different angles; fill lights, back lights, and a hanging boom mic. The place is clearly set up to film Captain America as he bursts dramatically through the front doors, challenging whoever has evoked his good name.

Bucky's more subdued entrance, however, has still gone unnoticed. At least five loud voices echo throughout the space, the feedback easily drowning out any sound Bucky's made. Steel stairs lead up to the elevated platform along the warehouse's far wall; Bucky peers out far enough to see more floodlights, not turned on, positioned in the topmost corners of the ceiling.

A fan club. Just what he needs. He's been so focused on becoming an urban sasquatch that he'd forgotten his Cap identity makes him a cryptid twice over.

Bucky's not actually sure how to handle an 'enemy' who just wants… footage. He can't give them what they want, obviously; he's already been slandered once this year by _CAPTAIN AMERICA HAS A GUN_ , some so-called documentary accusing Bucky of promoting a political agenda just by carrying a gun.

"This is slander," Bucky'd said dispassionately, watching it only under duress after Steve had laughed on the phone about it for twenty minutes.

"I like these dramatic re-enactments," Steve said. The film's primary message seemed to be that America drove away the 'real' Captain America ("I am the real Captain America!" Bucky shouted) and deserved only this new, angrier version, whose primary purpose was to commentate— _silently_ —on the alleged corruption of the nation's ideals.

"You didn't tell me you're a Navy SEAL," Steve said.

"I don't know where the hell people get these ideas."

"Nice rocket launcher."

"I'm not that fucking dramatic! I'm just trying not to die! You know what a rocket launcher is? A death trap in a hurry!"

"You really wear fatigues now?"

"No I don't wear fatigues! Stop pretending to take this seriously!"

"Oh my God—Bucky. ' _Avenge This_ '?" 

"It's not me!" 

"That is such a good catchphrase."

"I don't have a catchphrase!" Bucky shouted over the sound of Steve's laughter. "I will never have a catchphrase! Stop laughing! Stop getting ideas! This isn't funny! I'm coming over to turn off your television!"

So he's not inclined to deal with this documentary situation the way he usually would—which is to say, by walking out of the warehouse, prying off the roof, and landing dramatically in the middle of the platform with a large weapon in hand, not caring about what footage they got. He'd probably be labelled—probably rightly—as a violent offender once and for all after a stunt like that, which wouldn't exactly do much to keep the international search for Steve on the backburner.

Innocents or not, these fuckers not only invoked his name— _Steve's_ name—but they just made his job of preserving Steve's legacy a lot more difficult. He also can't just leave a fake Captain America cheesecloth flag waving in the sky; not unless he wants to attract a lot of questions about his persona he is not going to enjoy having to dodge. He's gonna have to come up with a way to make this disappear before it snowballs into something worse. 

It's so mundane a problem that he has no idea how to start to address it. He feels rooted to the floor, unsure how to settle this quietly. No matter what he does, he's likely to feed exactly into what they want—

Unless, of course, he can burn one cryptid profile to save the other.

Bucky steels himself and allows a moment to give the Sasquatch a final sendoff. He takes a grim picture of himself, half-shaved-off beard and all, right there in the warehouse, lighting be damned. Then he takes a deep breath, hits the button to record video, and steps into the warehouse, holding his phone high. 

"Looks like a filming operation of some kind," he says at a normal volume, turning slowly. "I dunno what Captain America thinks he's doing, but it seems kind of elaborate."

Behind him, the voices clatter into stunned silence. Bucky pretends to pay them no mind. "It doesn't look like he's actually here. That makes sense. It'd be kind of weird for him to just be standing here when everyone comes looking for him. Unless that's what he wants…?"

"Uhh," says a voice behind him. "Who the fuck are you?"

Bucky turns on his heel, swiveling his arm in front of him as he goes. "Oh!" he says, affecting his best impression of Scott Lang. "Wow! I didn't think I'd actually see you here." He holds his phone up higher to where the six dipshits are sitting around in cheap office chairs. "Looks like I've not only found Captain America, faithful viewers, but some of his friends while I'm at it! Avengers Headquarters right here in Red Hook, who'd'a thunk?"

"Wasn't anyone watching the security feeds?" someone mutters.

"That was your job," hisses someone else.

"Pretty bold self-advertisement you guys are doing," Bucky says, nodding appreciatively. "I mean, kudos. There's a _lot_ of people outside—"

"We know that," says the ringleader, flat. "The more publicity, the better. Now I dunno what you're doing here—"

"Where's the Falcon?" Bucky cuts in, grinning hopefully. "That guy's my favourite."

The ringleader pinches his nose, then stands up from his office chair. A hoodie cast over the chair behind him reads _NYU_. Well, that tracks. "We're not the Avengers."

"Sure you're not," Bucky says with a wink. When the guy looks incredulous, Bucky doesn't bother to fight his very genuine smile. "I hate to break it to you, Cap, but your cover's pretty bad if that's what you're trying to sell. You're flying the Captain America flag, for crying out loud."

"It's not—listen. We're trying to _find_ Captain America—"

"Brandon," someone hisses in the background. "Shut the fuck up."

NYU Brandon grinds his teeth. "Get the fuck out of here, man."

Bucky forces his best hurt expression. "Geez. Here I thought Captain America was supposed to be a nice guy."

"Hang on," says one of the NYU lackies. "I know this guy. He runs an Instagram account. Popular. He's like… Bigfoot, or something? I didn't recognize him from the—reverse mutton chops."

Bucky brightens. "You've heard of me!" He rubs a gloved hand at his jaw. "Do you like it? I'm trying something."

"Fuck it," says Brandon, waving an arm. "Roll cameras. This guy's almost as elusive as Captain America."

"Oh," Bucky says, waving a hand as he steps back into the shadows. "No, thank you. I couldn't possibly."

It's a weird enough response to buy him a couple seconds of stunned silence. "You—couldn't possibly?"

"Be part of your coming out story. That is what you're doing here, right? Revealing your identities to the public? I mean, hell—it's about damn time if you ask me. The people have _questions_!"

"Someone either start rolling or get this guy out of here—"

"No, I mean it, I really couldn't. It's really nice of you to offer to let me in, but guys, I just met you, and—this is _your_ journey. You should savour it. Plus the Avengers are so famous; who's gonna care about me? I do my best to keep my head down anyway. You never know who might want a piece of the Brooklyn Sasquatch, you know?" He gives a cordial laugh and starts dragging his feet back toward the makeshift door. "I guess I don't have to tell you that. Boy! Captain America goes to NYU! Guess they'll get some recruitment campaigns out of you, huh?" He shoots him a fingergun. "Anywhooo... best of luck in world-saving, or whatever. You gotta know I'm a fan. Especially of Falcon. God, what a shame he's not here. I'd love to shake that guy's hand." He shrugs, as though to say _What are you gonna do?_ "Don't worry; you don't have to do anything. I'll just tell everyone outside that you're here."

"No!" say all six of them in unison, but Bucky nods and winks elaborately.

"You've totally got this. You're letting your freak flag fly already! What an entrance into known society. I'm so proud of you guys. You're gonna look back on this for the rest of your lives."

Then Bucky slips out the way he came, pulls the panel clean off the side of the warehouse as he goes, and, lighting a cigarette, remarks to the crowd about how cool it was to meet the Avengers and asks why they weren't all just going in the back entrance to see for themselves.

He walks against the stampede out into the street, finding his mood suddenly improved. He swings into the nearest Starbucks, buys himself another coffee and something iced for Natasha, and stops to smell every flower on his way home.

  


  


***

  


  


Bucky calls Steve that night, then flinches so hard he ducks out of screen at the sight of himself in the bottom corner. "I forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"I, uh. There was… you know what, nevermind. Just brace yourself."

Bucky re-emerges. Steve takes one look at him and brightens quick. "What _happened_?"

"Long story. It's dashing, right?"

"Dashing is definitely the word I was looking for."

"You should try it. Reverse mutton chops. We could match."

"Tell you what," Steve says. "I'll do that, you buzz your hair. Then we'll _really_ match."

Bucky shakes his head. "You just had to go for the hair."

"You look ridiculous as it is. Would it really be such a step down?"

"It would." Bucky pauses a second, just glad he and Steve seem to be connecting again. "I gotta shave tonight anyway."

"Trouble?"

"No. I think I dealt with it possibly even better than usual _as_ the Sasquatch. That guy's coming in all kinds of handy. Just clean-up tomorrow."

Steve nods, pointedly not asking questions. 

That's when Bucky registers that Steve is bobbing up and down.

"What... are you doing?" Bucky asks.

"I'm running," says Steve.

"In… place?"

"That's the idea with treadmills."

Either Steve hasn't been running that long, or he's not going fast enough to break much of a sweat. "Why?"

"Well, Buck, treadmills are indoor alternatives to running outside. For reasons of space economy—"

"Shut up, genius. I meant why are you _running_?"

"I like to."

"No, you don't."

"Then it serves a purpose. Just to think straight I gotta run minimum twelve miles a day. I try to break it into six and six, but sometimes I gotta—" 

He cuts off, looking away and then up again with pursing lips. The personal again. Bucky's own stupid policy, back to bite him. His mind fills in the blank like a reflex: _Go to class. Moonlight as Captain France. Eat out some guy's ass until he's sobbing the name you made up for me._

"I'm trying to say I got energy to burn," Steve goes on, saving Bucky from himself. "You know how boring it is to just sit there and listen to lectures about vectors all the time? I swear half the time I die in the seat and reanimate just for food."

"My God. You're so broken."

"I'm not broken!"

"Remember when you used to just sit still and draw the same damn thing over and over for six hours at a time? What happened to that?" Still, it is kind of impressive that Steve's managing to carry on a phone conversation and look that annoyed while running nine miles an hour. "Twelve a day, huh?"

"My building has a gym."

"Is that where you are now?"

"Yeah."

It turns out that Bucky _is_ at least half as broken as Steve, because seeing him bounce up and down like that is giving Bucky all kinds of ideas. 

"You wanna…" Bucky clears his throat. "Call me back?"

Steve looks dead into the camera, bobbing like a buoy in the windswept seas. "You can't be serious."

"I think it's the... glistening."

"We can't get this right for weeks, but my treadmill sheen does it for you?"

"Oh, yeah, Rogers," Bucky says, low. "Burn that rubber."

Steve sighs and slows the treadmill to a halt, but at least he's smiling. "Well, you know what your getting off on nothing does to me," he says, snatching up the tablet.

"It's not nothing. You should see yourself."

"Could say the same for you, reverse mutton chops."

"Is that your new nickname for me?"

"Do you want it to be?"

"You are _dominating_ that hallway."

Steve shakes his head and leans, pressing the button for the elevator. "So glad I had the foresight to wear headphones."

"Look at you," Bucky says, sinking his teeth into his lip. "I bet you fuckin stink."

Steve's neck catches up to his cheeks in flush level. "You want me to describe my jogging stink to you?"

"God, would you?"

Steve grins and walks into the elevator. "I might lose you for a minute, I'll call you back."

"Uh-huh." Bucky adjusts the computer screen and rolls to his knees. Warm from his walk and good mood, Bucky'd shed off most of his clothes the second he got home, but he kept on his underwear and a tank, which made a reasonably good show for Steve without Bucky really trying.

"Oh," Steve mutters, involuntary—then adds, deeper, when Bucky slips his fingers beneath his waistband—" _Bucky._ Can you wait until I—"

He cannot, and does not. Steve presses the tablet against his chest, but he can't avert his eyes from Bucky's voice. "Can't believe you don't want to see how hard I am for your jog stink, Rogers."

"Mutton chops," Steve begins, microphone pressed to his shirt, "can it wait until I'm at least out of the elevator?"

"No." Bucky wraps a hand around himself and pulses his grip, good and slow. "Left me keeping myself warm now. What else am I gonna talk about?"

There's a long pause where Bucky thinks Steve did get disconnected, but then, still muffled—"Warm how?"

Even when he can't see a thing Bucky's doing, Steve can't resist him. Even when he's worried about popping a boner in his athleticwear in public, he asks Bucky to talk him through it. God, that's a good feeling. That's a real good fucking feeling. "Well," Bucky says, licking his lips around a smile, "you're not doing it for me, so I gotta improvise."

"That what you're thinking about?" Steve mutters quietly. Distantly, a ding—Steve's made it out of the elevator without company. "Me doing it for you?"

"Constantly."

"God, I wish I could."

"The sacrifice for a decent education."

"Believe me." Bucky gets a glimpse of something other than the fabric of Steve's shirt as he checks on him, but by now Bucky's tucked the bottom of his shirt into his collar to expose his torso to the camera. It'd look ridiculous if Steve could see all of him, but all that shows up on the screen are Bucky's hips, carving deep, and a peek of his pecs before the fabric dips down on either side. He's got one hand still in his boxers, the other set flat at his ribs, trying to make Steve jealous. "God," Steve mutters, hiding Bucky away again.

"You home yet?"

"Yeah." A click of the door.

"Great. Now tell me about that treadmill smell."

Steve hucks a laugh. "Please don't ruin this, it's been too long."

Bucky, magnanimous in all things, pumps his dick lazily until Steve gives a short groan. He's let just the head of him poke out over his fist, over the top of his bowing waistband, ab muscles engaged in control. 

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me," Steve says, hoarse. "You know that?"

"That's my line, pal. Take your clothes off already."

"You don't like my sweat stains?" Steve shows him his armpit.

"Oh, God. Keep it _on_."

Steve laughs and pulls the headphones out of the jack. He throws them across the room, then peels his shirt off anyway, flexing his pecs for Bucky's benefit. "If I'd known this was how you'd react," Steve tells him, "I would have Facetimed you at the gym way earlier."

"I dunno what it is." His voice is tending as coarse as Steve's; all he wants to do is touch him all over, Bucky's hands, fingers, lips to everything. "Maybe it's the way your uniform smelled at the end of two straight years on the front—"

"Didn't I ask you _not_ to ruin it?"

"I'm serious. I wanted you so bad and you smelled just godawful. Now it's like this Pavlovian response—"

Steve smiles and looks smitten. "You're talking like that and I can't even see your face."

"Do you need to?"

"I'd like to."

"Reverse mutton chops and all?"

"Yeah, Bucky. Reverse mutton chops and all."

Steve's voice has gone soft, now. It makes Bucky want to do anything just to make him happy. He takes his hand out of his pants, untucks his shirt from itself, and kneels lower on the bed, sighing gently as he sinks back into frame. "Who's gonna keep my dick warm now?"

Steve smiles. It's worth it. "Take it all off, you'll do fine."

"Me! What about you? You gonna strip tease me or what?"

"That what you want?"

"Glistening, Rogers."

Having carried Bucky into the bedroom, Steve carefully props the tablet against the pillows. "You want a show, is that it?" 

Bucky doesn't want a show. He wants to know what the fuck that guy is doing sitting in the corner of Steve's bedroom.

He sets his thumb against his laptop camera, praying whoever it is in Steve's room didn't get a look at him. "Turn the fuck around," Bucky says, quick and cold.

Steve, midway through undoing his pants, turns. His expression drops when he sees the guy in the chair. "Oh," Steve says, straightening; he recognizes him. Then Steve moves to grab the tablet without bothering to cover up. "B—ah—buh-baby," he says, then winces. "I gotta go. I'll call you tomorrow." 

Before Bucky can come up with a reply, Steve's ended the call and left Bucky sitting stunned.

  



	3. Dracula/Sasquatch 4 Ever

  


Natasha doesn't answer his text messages at 1:15, or at 2:00, or 5:45, but she does find him at his Captain America Starbucks at 6:30 leaning against the outside wall. He's somewhere between his seventh and eighth cigarette by then, other hand white-knuckling a venti triple-shot full fat caramel macchiato.

Natasha eyeballs him, then pulls the cigarette gently out from between his fingers. "What's eating you?"

"He's hiding something," Bucky says thinly.

"Who?" 

Bucky stares at her. "I don't have the energy for games. You know who."

Natasha closes her eyes and hums, leaning against the wall beside him. "This about your dead boyfriend?"

"Yes. My dead boyfriend. I'm dating Dracula, we're very happy together."

"Until now."

Bucky waves a hand. "Found another thrall in his bedroom."

"He's in the _country_?"

"No, he's not in the country! What kind of idiot do you take me for?"

"It's not you I'm worried about."

Bucky takes back his cigarette, eyes flicking to hers and then away again. "He probably would be stateside if I hadn't told him a hundred times not to come. But I did. So, he's not."

His tone betrays more than he prefers. Worse, Natasha's expression appears to tip into genuine sympathy. "What happened to your face," she says, exasperatedly brushing squares of toilet paper off his chin.

"My dead boyfriend is hiding things, so I forgot how to shave."

"I'm sure he has his reasons."

"For having another thrall in his bedroom?"

"How did you find this other thrall in the first place?"

"He…" Bucky gestures. "Carried me there."

Natasha's expression fights to find neutrality. "Your relationship with Dracula sounds varied and fulfilling."

"On a tablet," he says, scowling. "We… Facetime."

"Thought vampires couldn't be caught on camera."

Bucky glares at her. Natasha leaves him the cigarette and takes his coffee this time. "I assume the thousand missed calls means this happened this morning," she asks, sipping delicately.

"There's no other reason for a thrall in his bedroom at that hour of the day. And I sent you three texts. _Three._ "

"This come out of nowhere?"

"I mean… kinda. We've been," Bucky waves a hand, "not quite connecting. Lately. Or something."

"Hmm."

"Don't," Bucky interjects; "don't. If you're gonna tell me drift was inevitable, you can meet me after I'm done this mission and get me drunk first."

"You can't get drunk."

"Quitter talk."

"Anyway, I'm trying to talk you down. Dracula doesn't seem the type to stray."

"Even after three years?"

Natasha stares at him. Bucky smokes, toiling.

"You haven't seen Dracula," she says slowly, "the whole three years since he died?"

Bucky taps at his sternum. "Steel ribs, courtesy of Hydra. Can't fly commercial. Meanwhile he can't enter the country legally without blowing his cover, and he probably can't do it _illegally_ without blowing his cover either."

"Oh, _Barnes._ "

"Don't 'oh Barnes' me, I'm being _safe._ "

"You sure about that?"

"Yes! He's out there trying to foot it alone. It's not like anyone knows he's alive to extend resources to. For all intents and purposes, he's—" Bucky glances at her, redirects. "A regular guy. I aim to protect that to the fullest extent of my ability, it was the whole fucking _point_ of this bullshit in the first place, so, no, Romanoff, I'm not gonna take a stupid risk just to—"

"See," Natasha says slowly, "your boyfriend's face?"

"I see his face plenty," Bucky mutters.

"Hmm."

"We've been making it work."

"Phone sex? For three years?"

Bucky winces and trades his cigarette for the coffee again. "Don't ask."

She takes the cigarette easy, leaning back against the wall. "So you weren't quite connecting all of a sudden, but then he carried you into his bedroom. And then you met his other thrall."

"He didn't seem to realize the thrall was gonna be there. But once he realized, he didn't—act right."

"Right how?"

"He didn't—cover up."

"He was naked?"

"Technically he still had pants on. Barely."

Natasha gapes at him. " _The thrall was half-naked in his—_ "

Bucky shushes her, furious. "Lower your goddamn voice, would you? I barely saw the thrall. S… _Dracula_ was half-naked at the time and didn't bother to address that fact when he found some asshole in his bedroom."

"So _Dracula,_ " Natasha begins loudly.

Bucky hides his face from passerby. "So help me God—"

"Was giving you a _strip-tease_ on _Facetime_ with another _thrall_ in his _bedroom_?"

Bucky counts silently to ten in his head, glowering out into the street. Natasha smokes extravagantly beside him. She's having far too much fun for someone ostensibly here to help him.

"You done?" he finally croaks, temper back to neutral.

"So Dracula was giving you a strip tease," Natasha repeats, voice normal again.

"You know what? Fuck you. Go be Karen away from me."

"And there was some other thrall in his bedroom that he was surprised to see," she intones, finally sounding resigned to actually helping. "But didn't cover up for, and then he said..."

Bucky sighs, but feels bad enough to acquiesce to the play-by-play. "He said, 'I'll call you tomorrow.'"

"The thrall say anything?"

"No."

"And he said it just like that? 'I'll call you tomorrow'?"

"He said, 'Gotta go. Call you tomorrow.'" 

Natasha frowns. Bucky frowns back. "What, is that worse?"

"Dunno yet," Natasha says. "Then he hung up?"

"Yeah."

"And—understanding we're talking about a strip tease from the undead here—there's nothing else, apart from your disconnectey thing and the fact that there was a surprise man in his bedroom, that seemed weird or out of the ordinary?"

Bucky glares at her, snatching his cigarette back just to have something smoldering to death in his hand.

Natasha smiles indulgently. "Go on."

"I want it known that this is out of the ordinary," Bucky says. "That it _never_ happens. That's why I'm bringing it up."

"Okay."

Bucky stares. Natasha stares back. 

"He called me," Bucky says eventually, " _baby._ "

Natasha barely subdues her elation. "Stop," he hisses. "It's not cute, or whatever the hell. He did it trying to… save face. He was fumbling my name. Maybe he was figuring out that he should have seemed more shocked that there was _another man_ in his bedroom..."

She puts a hand on his arm. The sympathy burns. Mockery was kinder. 

"You're overthinking," she tells him.

"You think?"

"Let's contextualize. What does Dracula do overseas, exactly?"

"It…" He shuts his eyes. "Doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. Is he a giggolo?"

Bucky frowns. "No. Normal life. Regular guy. That's all you need to know."

"So he's not a—superhuman figure anymore?"

"Nope."

Natasha narrows her eyes. "How sure are you of that?"

"Mmmoderately. Look, the point is that he was comfortable almost-naked with someone else in his bedroom."

"Barnes," Natasha sighs. Bucky makes a noise of disgust and takes a furious drag. "Whatever distance you felt? It was a regular low point. It happens. It doesn't mean anything. He's gonna call you tonight and give you some kind of reasonable explanation, and in a few hours you're going to think about all this and wonder what you were upset about."

"What if… I don't know shit," Bucky mumbles, vigorously ashing his cigarette. "What if he's in danger?"

Natasha stares at him. " _You_ don't know what he does overseas?"

Bucky breathes harshly into the morning in silence.

"Oh."

"It's intentional. We make a point of not talking about it. I don't talk about what I do, either. And that's fine—I mean, I guess he gets more because of, whatever, press releases, news footage—"

"Barnes."

"But it's—fine, y'know? As long as he's happy, I guess it... doesn't actually matter what he's doing." He clenches his jaw. "Or who."

But then he has to stop talking, because Natasha starts rubbing a comforting hand at his shoulder.

"Holy shit. Is it that dire?"

"No," Natasha says. "But you're sleep-deprived and lonely and _apparently_ , god forbid, upset enough to talk about your feelings, so I'm doing my best impression of a human being so you can have a friend for thirty seconds."

Bucky tries to find something acidic to say, but instead he just finds himself tipping slowly over until his cheek is resting on top of Natasha's head. "Thank you for your sacrifice."

"I'll manage." She slides the cigarette back out of Bucky's hand and pats kindly at his head. "It has been a while since I've talked to Dracula, but I know the only thing that _used_ to make him happy was you. I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"The whole point of this was for that not to be true anymore. Maybe… he did the job a little too well."

"Barnes…" She forces eye contact, hand at his chin. "He has the option of dropping contact. He doesn't have to answer your calls; he doesn't have to message you. Even when you were distant, you were still talking. Right?"

Bucky doesn't say anything. He'd hate for Natasha to think she was right.

"He couldn't stay gone from you if his life depended on it, _apparently_ , so—at least let him explain. It seems to me like he'll want to."

Bucky mulls this over a while. "He probably has no idea he was acting weird. He's always had this—or not always; since he got big, anyway, it's like he has no shame about his body, it was probably just… whatever."

He sighs. Natasha smiles at him, then taps a friendly fist at his cleanshaven jaw. "You going after this Capsignal thing for real this time?" she asks.

"Just cleanup left," Bucky says, happy enough to change the subject. "I sasquatched it last night, pretended I was investigating for Instagram."

"Not sure I condone using 'sasquatch' as a verb. Nor the word 'investigate' with 'Instagram'..."

"Bunch of college kids in a warehouse," Bucky says, ignoring her. "Felt tempting to go full metal sasquatch on the situation, but then I figured out how to give them so much publicity they'd be forced to clear out."

"How restrained." 

"Just dismantling left, waiting for Wilson to wake up for a lift. Might leave a calling card or something. Teach them not to fuck around in a world they can't handle." Bucky shakes his head. "They're frankly fucking lucky Hydra didn't nuke the place on the off-chance I was in there."

Natasha watches him flick the butt into the street. "Sure it's wise going in there twice so close together?"

"Dunno. I think it might actually be handled. Worst case, I'll have to burn the Sasquatch."

"Aww!"

"Knew that going in. It was never gonna last forever. Might give it a couple days to see if people put two and two together, but I'm probably stuck with this crowded fuckin Starbucks now."

"Shame. I liked that guy."

"You and me both."

Bucky holds his hand out for his coffee. Natasha gives it to him, fishing for the carton of cigarettes out of his pocket at the same time. "Dracula go for the Sasquatch?" she asks, removing one from the package and sliding it behind her ear.

"You'd be surprised what Dracula goes for." 

Natasha's hacking laughter actually puts a smile on his face, so Bucky hooks an arm around her neck and presses an affectionate kiss to her forehead. Sometimes it's worth feeling like shit a hot minute just to remember you've got a decent friend in the world.

  


  


***

  


  


Wilson kindly obliges Bucky with a lift through Brooklyn. It's a beautiful day; it's kind of nice not to be sporting a beard for once. With his hair tucked under the Cap cowl, the breeze is almost tolerable as it hits his face at full assault. Bucky'd strenuously objected the first time Stark suggested the installation of handles on the back of his uniform for this exact purpose, but he was forced to admit they were coming in pretty handy.

"You owe me for jet replacements," Sam shouts at him before letting him go right over the warehouse.

"Eat shit, Wilson," Bucky says in thanks, charging fist-first toward the warehouse to make the entrance he wanted from the start.

The cheesecloth imposter flag was taken down sometime yesterday afternoon. Fortunate for him in more ways than one; now he won't risk getting tangled in it on the way down. Bucky puts the full force of his body weight behind his fist as he hits the roof as hard as he can; then, in the massive crater left by his efforts, Bucky rolls to his feet and surveils the area. 

They're almost definitely gonna get some kind of footage of him; he'd resigned himself to that hours ago. There are probably cameras he can't see hidden away in corners and the like. The trick is going to be to stay as efficient as possible without looking like he's trying to make any kind of _political statement._

Bucky unsheathes his pistol, then sighs and puts it away again. He'll make a judgment on how exactly to look once he gets inside.

Bracing himself for the effort, Bucky stoops, peeling up the side of the roof with his prosthetic arm as dramatically as he dreamed. He swings inside the warehouse, landing hard behind where the cameras had been set up yesterday—metal arm first—deadass in the centre of the warehouse. 

The inside is trashed now, a far cry from the sparsity from the day before; the media frenzy had apparently been significant, which Bucky had cheerfully watched firsthand from the safety of his apartment. The newsfeeds had slowly scrolled from _CAPTAIN AMERICA FLAG SPOTTED IN BROOKLYN_ to _AVENGERS UNMASKED IN PLANNED PRESS CONFERENCE_ to _SUPERHERO SUPERHOAX?_ to _NYU STUDENTS FACING QUESTIONS, BLAME AFTER AVENGERS IMPERSONATION_ , and Bucky'd undergone the most satisfying evolution of schadenfreude he'd ever had the privilege of experiencing in his life.

The major equipment is now gone, as Bucky expected; a solitary mic stand still sits in the corner. The computers on the landing are all gone too, though the desks, chairs, and mini-fridge remain. With his shoulders thrown back and hair tied out of his face, Bucky gives himself a moment to surveil the room, then slowly reaches up to turn on the device in his ear. "Sweep."

"Scanning," says the automated voice, then: "Three devices: eighty five degrees, two hundred and ten degrees, three hundred and fifteen degrees."

Bucky maps them in his mind without turning his head. One or two he can probably grab, but the other one he'll have to shoot, so he may as well shoot all three. "Transmitting?"

"Live feed."

Bucky swears quietly and takes the pistol out of its holster. At least they caught his dramatic entrance on camera. He finds the first camera easy enough, sitting on the far north wall at about ten feet; shoots it out easy. It seems like the hardest one to get to, so maybe they figured they didn't need to hide it. 

The other two take a little more work. 

It doesn't look great, Bucky trying to find them. That annoys him. Somewhere on someone's computer, footage plays of Captain America spending a minute peering between 210 degrees and 315 degrees—probably looking dead at the goddamned things—and seeing nothing. "You got anything else for me?" he asks, climbing the metal stairs halfway.

"Look up," says FRIDAY helpfully.

"Thanks."

On assessment, he realizes the only option left to him is—parkour.

Bucky sighs. He thinks he can see the one on the west wall now—a tiny thing, barely a dot, on a narrow ledge at about fourteen feet. It would have been invisible in the dark if not for his well-trained eye. 

Bucky climbs up the stairs as far as he can, even going around the east corner toward the platform. Then he takes a running jump up toward the southern wall.

Grabbing with his prosthetic arm, he uses his momentum to pull higher and leap several feet closer to the western ledge. His boot barely catches traction on the narrow connector between sheets of steel and gives him something to push off from. With another leap he's able to grab the west wall again, and from there he can shimmy along with both hands, ignoring the slicing pain to his right fingertips, as he finds the camera and destroys it with the pressing force of his prosthetic thumb.

Triumphant, he jumps down from the wall and walks back up on the stairs. That just leaves the third. Though the eastern wall is better lit thanks to the hole Bucky tore in the ceiling, Bucky still can't find what the hell he's looking for. 

It takes him a while to think to look beyond a reasonable height. 

There—far, far above the reach of a ladder—the third and final camera sits at twenty-seven feet, attached to the warehouse's actual ceiling.

Bucky stares, thinking. He could technically probably ape his way up there, but… God, he's tired. Even the thought of it is just so beyond the scope of his energies. It seems like a lot more work than it's worth just to make a goddamned point. He could try to shoot it from where he is, but the damn pinhole camera's so small he's afraid he might miss it—shoot a hole through the warehouse wall, or have the bullet ricochet and hit him instead. 

That'd be a surefire way to let them win—shoot himself in his own damn mission. That's out, then. Bucky contemplates his other options. He'll have to humiliate them somehow, or at least set some other deterrent to prevent them from trying to do it again. He'd really hoped they might have left their expensive equipment so Bucky could have stolen it and offered them a financial loss, but they're smarter than that. There's no real sense trying to track them, unless he wants to commit acts of vigilante against a research university just because they took his name in vain.

Bucky looks around the warehouse to see what he has to work with. That kid Peter Parker has a lot of good ideas on how to annoy the shit out of your enemy until they leave you alone, but mostly they involve a sound system, an elabourate pressure mechanism by which to release roughly two tons of glitter, and possibly rights to Gwen Stefani songs. 

Bucky has none of those, nor does he have the patience to procure them. He wants to deal with this now. That means that all he has to work with is desks, chairs, three alan keys, and a yellowing pad of paper left in one of the desks.

Standing on the platform against the eastern wall, out of the view of the kids' final camera, Bucky figures something out. It'll have to do.

  


  


***

  


  


Steve calls mostly on time, a little after midnight. 

Bucky, tired, stares at the screen and lets it ring. He's not sure he's ready to face this. Whatever answer Steve has for him, Bucky's not going to want to hear it—not just because it will upset him, but because it'll almost definitely break the rules on sharing personal information. 

For a minute, Bucky thinks maybe he should just let this lie. Let Steve pursue his life free and clear of him. If Steve doesn't have to answer Bucky's calls, Bucky doesn't have to answer Steve's, either.

His will is only made of so much iron. He reaches and slams the answer button on the fourth ring.

"Hi," says Steve, looking sorry.

"Hey," says Bucky, pretending to be distracted.

"Bucky—I'm sorry about earlier."

Bucky takes his time shuffling papers just to avoid looking at the screen. When finally he does, he sees Steve looking as tired as Bucky feels. "You not sleep?" Bucky mutters.

"Not since our last conversation."

Bucky nods. He continues to shuffle papers.

Steve leans forward on his elbows. "Will you let me explain?"

"Does it involve personal information?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then no." Bucky flashes him a thin smile. It probably looks more vindictive than he intended.

Steve stares at him. He doesn't have his contacts in; his eyes are too blue when his hair is so dark, boring into him from miles away. " _Please_ let me explain."

"You don't have to."

"I know you, Buck. I know your worst-case scenarios. I guarantee you that what I have to say is gonna be easier to swallow than not knowing."

"I doubt that."

"Stop being an asshole and let me—"

Bucky bristles. "Leave it alone, Rogers. There's no sense rehashing what can't be helped."

Steve stares on. In the light of the Parisian morning, he leans closer to the tablet. "Then let me come tell you firsthand."

Bucky frowns, hard. " _No._ "

"We can talk about things, really talk about them, without you worrying about us being overheard. I have a semester break in a week's time—"

"Stop it, Steve, I mean it."

"Goddamnit, Bucky," Steve bites out of nowhere, "let me say _something_. Do you know how much it's killing me not being able to talk to you?"

Bucky looks at him, startled. He forgets his anger fast these days. He's not sure what to make of that. "You know how bad I wanna see you," he says, a little tight. "It's not feasible."

"Why," Steve says, eyes closed, " _not?_ "

"Every agency in the world is looking for you. You might have your contact lenses and Just For Men and a decent set of papers, but you get caught on even _one_ camera in _one_ airport, Steve, international organizations we don't even know the _names_ of are gonna send in teams—"

"Then I'll take a boat."

Bucky winces his incredulity. "You don't have that kind of time. Neither do I."

"So ask Tony to borrow the jet."

"Stark's not gonna give me a goddamn thing that doesn't humiliate me in some way, and _especially_ not if it's meant to get me to you. You're supposed to be _dead_ , remember? What am I gonna say, I'm going on vacation to France for no reason given?"

Steve buries his face in his hands. Steve's tired, too; Bucky forgets that sometimes. He wishes he cut put his hand through the screen, slide his fingers against Steve's palm; feel his warmth, give him comfort.

"So we just carry on like this for another year?" Steve asks, re-emerging, clearing his throat. "Creating false assumptions out of miscommunications we can't even fix?"

"Or," Bucky says carefully, not looking at the screen, "we could just… call it off."

There's a long pause. When Bucky finally finds it in him to look up, Steve's got his hands cupped around his mouth, eyes closed. "Is that what you want?" he finally rasps, sounding far away.

Bucky shakes his head, stunned by Steve's reaction. For a minute he can't say anything. Every time he tries, he just shakes his head some more. "No," he mutters.

"I don't want it either." Steve takes a steadying breath. "We've tried being apart and it hasn't worked. I don't want being apart to work. Do you?"

"No."

"Then don't bring it up again. You're saying visiting isn't an option; I'm saying calling it off isn't one, so just don't."

Bucky nods. He sets his elbows against the desk, steepling his fingers against his forehead, trying to find composure.

It takes a while. All they do is stay on the line and breathe with each other, trying to find ground. 

"Don't you dare cry," Bucky rasps, when Steve wipes an angry palm at his face.

"Who's crying?" asks Steve, nasal.

A shaky smile blossoms on Bucky's face, but then he has to hide behind his hands again. "You're not sleeping with that guy," he croaks, forcing himself to look at Steve, "right?"

" _No_ ," Steve breathes. "I told you before, I would never do that to you. He's… an acquaintance." Steve flinches, then ducks his head to catch Bucky's eye. "Do you understand my meaning? I needed his expertise for something, but the relationship soured. He's gone; it's dealt with. He won't be bothering me again."

So it's not an affair, but it is the other thing. The one that risks his cover way more than Bucky ever could.

Steve never could leave a damn thing alone. 

"Are you safe?" Bucky grits out, finally pulling the hands away from his face. "Are you being safe?"

Steve purses his lips at him. It says a lot without saying anything. "I'm taking precautions you'd want me to take," he says diplomatically.

Bucky nods, eyes closed again. At least that's something. "This is reckless," he mutters, automatic.

"I know."

"I can't take over that identity, too."

"You mean to say you're not alive just to clean up my messes?" Steve shakes his head. "Lazy, Buck."

"Couch potato," Bucky agrees. "That's my next cover. I've been thinking of pivoting to video. Three-minute clips of me watching television."

Steve's smile broadens. In spite of his fatigue, he might be the most beautiful thing Bucky's ever seen.

"I miss the hell out of you," Bucky says, suddenly fierce.

Steve nods, smile flickering. He swallows hard, jaw clenching, instead of saying anything back. 

He doesn't have to. Bucky knows what it means.

Exhaustion suddenly catches up with him. He misses Steve and he's so goddamn tired. He picks up his laptop and trudges toward the bedroom. "End of the semester, huh?" he asks, peeling off his sweatshirt and collapsing into bed. "You got exams?"

"Yeah, I got exams. You wanna hear about them?"

Bucky nods, propping Steve sideways on the bed. "Yeah, I do."

"Really?"

"Fuck security. You clearly don't care; right now, I'm too tired to care either. Tell me about your classes, the professors you hate, the kind of shit you like to learn about. I can't believe I don't know any of that."

Steve pauses. Then, slowly, he takes his tablet and crawls into bed beside him—not beside him. Almost beside him. Beside him enough. "I've got five exams," he says, sounding like exhaustion just hit him too, "for four classes."

"What? How?"

"My most hellish class this semester has both a practical and a written. Have to fix a faulty design, then explain using sources what I did and why. Later there's an additional written on branding."

"Christ. You're taking this willingly?"

"It's a prerequisite," Steve says flatly, as though offended Bucky even needed to ask. But then he explains all the things he likes about the course that he didn't expect, how it helped him learn why Captain America has been such a lasting image through the decades; and, after Steve fills him in on two or three exams more, they fall asleep like that, still on the line. 

Bucky finally wakes at the crack of dawn to find the call had only died when Bucky's laptop did. He smiles to think of Steve waking up to discover the same—to think that the both of them are still as sick with love as they had been at the start of this. As foolish and lonely; as recklessly devoted as the fates would allow.

  


  


***

  


  


For almost an entire day, Bucky thinks everything might actually hold together. He and Steve are on good ground; the Capsignal hasn't reared its ugly head again. He hasn't even heard any follow-up from the warehouse incident, after the initial articles about the Cap flag being a hoax.

Then the shoe drops.

He catches the headline only because six dozen people DM him about it on Instagram at roughly the same time:

  


CAPTAIN AMERICA OR BROOKLYN SASQUATCH?  
_Instagram Star Outed As Local Vigilante_

  


Bucky grips the screen with both hands, pulse in his ears. After a second of raw panic, he tracks down the link.

  


> The identity of a Brooklyn Instagram sensation has been outed—and so has the identity of Captain America.
> 
> Video footage obtained by the New York Post has confirmed that William Yves, a.k.a. the "Brooklyn Sasquatch," is also the man behind the mask of the enigmatic Captain America. Yves, whose Instagram account @BklynSasquatch has garnered hundreds of thousands of followers, was identified from footage taken Tuesday using facial recognition software.
> 
> Brandon Humphrey, the NYU student who took the footage, told the Post his term project was to uncover the identity of Captain America. In the footage, Yves can be seen speaking to Humphrey at length, ironically accusing the NYU student himself of masquerading as Captain America.

  


There is a video attached. Bucky is absolutely, one hundred percent sure he doesn't want to watch it.

He watches it anyway. At least he'll know what the hell went wrong. He'd done a good enough job of standing in the shadows; the problem was all the time he spent in the glare of his own goddamned phone.

  


> Humphrey said that he may not have been able to make the positive identification of the man as Captain America had Yves, this time wearing the familiar uniform, not returned to the warehouse a second time the following day.
> 
> Humphrey's Wednesday footage shows Captain America—who we now know to be Yves—make a dramatic entrance, spending a short time eliminating two of the warehouse's cameras before ducking out of frame. A short time later, Yves can be seen pushing a large statue of a robot—made entirely of repurposed office furniture, the Post has learned—back into frame. 
> 
> The robot, making a rude gesture with one hand, was adorned with a large sign touting a rude slogan that used the kind of language the Post could not print.
> 
> "We caught it all on tape," Humphrey said, noting that the robot had been taken home by one of his crew as memorabilia. 
> 
> "We lost a lot of money, but it was all worth it." 
> 
> "I kind of can't believe it worked."

  


Bucky slams his laptop shut and presses his fingers into his eyes. 

He can't believe it worked either. He'd been so fucking careful, and yet incredibly careless at the same time. Some of these variables he couldn't have predicted. There's no way a camera that far away could have pinged Captain America's face as Bucky's; not with the sheer amount of cover his cowl provides. The kid took a risk in selling his assertions to the only newspaper in New York that might have found his story credible, but the damage was done: proof or not, Yves' name is associated with Captain America for good.

Bucky won't only have to scrub the Sasquatch from the internet. He'll have to scrub Yves as well.

"Fuck," Bucky mutters. He runs a hand over his mouth, then reaches for his laptop. The great thing about being paranoid as fuck is that you tend to create a contingency for every possible scenario—even ones that seem beyond the scope. He'd set up the scrub codes ages ago to get the Sasquatch off the internet; all he has to do to get rid of Yves is to make a phone call.

Yet he's tired just thinking about it. He'll have to take care of his apartment; he won't have a chance to tell Steve, Nat, or Sam what he's doing. He'll have to go full dark for a few weeks at least, until he has the papers he needs to set up a new cover; until the media frenzy realizes the evidence doesn't quite line up, prints retractions, moves on. The other Avengers will figure it out and pick up the slack. New York will be fine.

Everything will be fine. He just has to remember that.

It's with a heavy heart that he carries through the motions. He'd built a good life here; he's never kept up a cover for three years before. He checks briefly on the Sasquatch's Instagram page on his secured browser and notices that, in the hour since the story dropped, his follower count has already tripled.

Screenshots will be circulated for a long time. He can't get rid of the Sasquatch completely; all he can do is cut off the source.

It's heartening in a way—and terrifying in another—that no amount of burning can quite erase the Sasquatch's time on this world. Living long as he has with the Winter Soldier's history in his wake, you'd think he'd be accustomed by now to the fact that his legacies are out of his hands.

This was fun. Once a week for a couple of years, Bucky found a way to put a smile on someone's face. This whole thing was stupid in more ways than one, but overall he's not sure if he can fault himself for doing it.

Bucky punches the scrub code into the command box. He only hesitates a second before pressing send.

  


  


***

  


  


  


_Three days later..._

  


Bucky settles on four laps around the building, then moves counter-clockwise a couple more times for good measure. By then he's certain he's drawn more attention to himself than if he'd just walked in without bothering to check the perimeter at all, so he steels his courage and scales the building up to the fourth-floor window.

He hopes his intel is right. He'd already spent an hour scoping the neighbourhood, finding evidence from Steve's Instagram photos to make sure he'd done his math right: there's the little roadway park Steve seems to like to read in; there's that fountain that little dog had jumped into. All the photos are from the neighbourhood next door, which means that this arrondissement is probably the one Steve actually lives in. From the look of the bushes in the courtyard and the cactus in the window, Bucky figures he must be in the right place.

The building scales easy. He'd known Steve has awning windows; it's Bucky's good fortune that Steve's decided to leave one open. The trick becomes to do away with the screen and crawl in through the narrow enclosure—and to do it, no less, without causing harm to Steve's companion cactus. 

"Don't you want something that flowers?" Bucky'd asked, months ago, languishing naked on the bed. He'd been looking at the cactus where it loomed on the windowsill behind Steve's body as Steve dozed, both of them refusing, post-long-distance handjob, to hang up for any reason.

"Mm?" Steve asked blearily, then turned to follow Bucky's gaze best he could. "Oh." He burrowed back down into the blankets. "Nah. Cacti flower anyway."

"No they don't."

"Yeah," he said sleepily, voice muffled by bedding, "they do. Not when they're thriving."

"You got a type, huh?"

"And usually not until they're over 30."

"Thirty… _years_?"

"Yeah."

"So you're saying cacti only feel free to fuck once they're old and unhappy."

Steve had laughed, too tired to remember that he thinks he doesn't do that. "Old, unhappy... cold."

" _Wow._ "

Steve rolled over, taking the tablet with him. "Told you I missed you."

Now, hanging from the window, Bucky presses his head against the concrete façade as the usual feeling of pointless devotion pulses through his veins. Finally it ebbs enough to turn his limbs steady. Bracing himself, Bucky glances over his shoulder and leaves himself hanging from only his metal arm, carefully going about removing the screen with an exacto knife so as not to knock Steve's precious Bucky-cactus out of the window.

Somehow, he manages to squeeze through the narrow frame without breaking anything or making a commotion. Rolling silently to his feet inside Steve's bedroom, Bucky's first order of business is to make sure Steve's cactus is still intact.

It is. Bucky saved his stupid friend. In the dark of the night, the room is smaller than Bucky expected. Maybe it was the fact that he tended to see it along Steve's long lines—his arm; his back; the curve of his hip. Actually standing in it, everything feels much more claustrophobic than it had seemed through the tablet camera.

Still, there's no doubt that he's in the right place. Steve's bedroom isn't fancy, big enough only for the necessities and a comfortable chair beside the closet. Bucky knows the layout of the apartment well; if he turns the corner, he'll see a single room containing both kitchen and living space, barely big enough to turn around in. Steve has a cheap pine worktable set up right across from the bedroom door. From the light casting into the room, Bucky suspects he must be there, hunched over his drafting, the only light in the apartment cast from his tiny yellow desk lamp.

Bucky's heart starts pounding in his ears. 

What if he's made an awful mistake? 

He'll get answers, at least. Maybe they both will. He hopes to God Steve hasn't been too worried, or maybe he hopes he was worried a little. Maybe he even got dumb enough to get in touch with Natasha, when he saw the Sasquatch burned. Maybe he'd read the news article himself and put two and two together, knowing Bucky would want to lie low for a while, just focused on his stupid exams.

Maybe he's sitting there working through his assignments as though nothing's different at all.

Only one way to find out. 

Bucky turns the corner. His hand slips at the edge of the doorjamb—partly for support, partly for something tactile to keep him connected to the world—and there sits Steve, just as he'd thought: in his chair, pencil in hand, though he doesn't seem to be working. 

He's hunched over, one hand pinching at his brow, the other wrapped tight around his phone, like he's waiting for it to ring any second. Bucky feels a pang, worries leaching fast out through his feet. Now that he sees him, he feels like he can't move; he wants Steve to turn, to see him there, to meet him halfway. 

He isn't sure how to break the silence. It takes him a second to register that Steve's posture has shifted. It isn't much; Steve's hands stay where they were, but his shoulders have rotated just by a fraction of an inch. Bucky wouldn't have noticed it but for the lighting: the way Steve's shirt pulls taut between his shoulders. The shadows have changed in the low candescence of the room.

Steve's getting better at not giving himself away. He may not have heard Bucky break in, but he knows someone's behind him now.

Yet Bucky still can't seem to move. Stupid. He's stupid. He shouldn't have done this, or else he should have knocked on the front fucking door; let Steve invite him in properly, only Bucky couldn't have been able to tell what unit he lived in from the inside. Hadn't he been snooping anyway? He'd had half a mind to slither unseen through the window just to ambush whatever threat or secret lover was waiting in the bedroom. 

But there's only Steve in front of him, or Patrick Graham—that short, dark hair, lamp revealing a glimmering hint of blond growing in underneath. Something about this scene reminds Bucky of Bucharest: the way he'd watched, stalk-still, as Steve stood in his apartment, unable to take a single step closer toward him. Brought to some impossible stillness by the simple fact of him, immobility setting in his bones after so much time spent apart.

Steve gives a short sigh. He raises his head, drops the hand from his face. "You here to fight?" he asks without turning.

Bucky can't help but smile. "Only if you got no other ideas."

Steve turns in his chair so fast that its armrest cracks under his grip. "Oh," he breathes, "my God."

Bucky knows what he must look like: hair unkempt, greasy from traveling, the only part of his appearance kept up being his care to shave. Steve's looking at him like he doesn't see any of it. 

Bucky takes a delicate step forward anyway. "I had to burn everything."

Shakily, Steve stands. He doesn't seem sure whether to believe he's there. "Okay."

"I'm sorry I didn't call. I just had to go."

Steve nods, finding it in him to step forward. "Okay."

Bucky's not sure which one of them should reach out first. In the end, they do it at the same time. Steve's real; he's there, they both are. Bucky drags his fingers across Steve's palm and sets their hands together, hanging halfway in the air, eyes closing with sudden feeling. 

"I stole Stark's jet," he rasps. He's just talking to buy time. He's still scared of something, can't figure out what.

Steve gives a sound like a weightier laugh. "Good."

"Would you stop agreeing with me?"

"Sure."

" _Stop._ "

Steve cups his face. Bucky holds at his wrist—a plea not to move. "You're here?" Steve murmurs.

Bucky nods. "Putting you at more risk."

"Okay," Steve says, and then just like that, he's drifting in, holding Bucky in place. Bucky wouldn't want to be anywhere else. 

He slides a hand at the back of Steve's neck, and three years of distance accordions and shatters in seconds. Steve's kissing him, warm; nothing else matters. This is everything, right here. Bucky falls apart from the outside in. 

"It's just that I am so _fucking_ bad," Bucky croaks, hands shaking, "at being without you."

Steve takes his face in both hands and kisses him deeper instead of saying anything back. The gesture, in the end, says much more than words. When Bucky's knees give out and he's sent stumbling back, Steve follows so close and with such intuition that they may as well be of one mind, as though no time and no distance had passed between them at all.

Three goddamned years and three and a half thousand miles, and through it all, at the end of it, Bucky's finally found his way home.

  


  


  


  


  


### Epilogue.

 

They don't sleep for a long time, instead spending hours nakedly drowsing, Bucky with his face pressed to the crook of Steve's neck, their legs tangled together. He drops a kiss to Steve's collar now and then between muttered snippets of conversation that don't really go anywhere—questions that occur to them lazily as they run through the back catalogue of all the things they've wanted to ask each other but never could. Stuff about Steve's program. How Captain America's been going, how Sam and Natasha and everyone else have been faring.

Bucky does, eventually, make Steve roll over him and reach for the closet door without letting him actually detach. Bucky wants to see the so-called "combat suits" he only uses "now and then" in "emergencies" when it's a matter of "life and death." But he also doesn't want to let Steve out of his reach, so Steve falls halfway off the bed in the effort—but he manages. 

Bucky mouths at his chest between passing glimpses. "They look flimsy."

"They get the job done." Steve engages his abs to right himself onto the bed again, but Bucky kind of likes him like this: stretching away in exaggerated limbo, vulnerable and exposed. Bucky tries to keep him there, hand spread wide against his ribs, and after a brief struggle, Bucky finds himself being rolled back over the bed again. 

"It's not like they know who they're dealing with anyway," Steve mutters, all 220 pounds of him leaning hard against him.

"I don't care," Bucky begins, pausing long enough to let Steve kiss him, "what they know or don't. I care—" a longer interlude this time, heavy with tongue, giving Bucky ideas about abandoning conversation all over again, "about the assholes showing up at your home without your knowing apparently just to catch you off-guard."

Steve's hands tangle with Bucky's to pin them to the bed. He sucks marks uninterrupted against Bucky's neck, full weight pinning Bucky down. "That was just Marc."

"And Marc is?"

"He's—he _was_ —my weapons dealer."

"Your—" Bucky can't ignore that. He slips his hands from beneath Steve's and flips him over gently, fingers at his hips. "Say again?"

Steve covers his eyes and winces, leaning back against the sheets. "Don't get excited."

"Are you… Steve. Sweetheart." He leans over him, leering. "Make me the happiest man alive and tell me you've finally started to carry a gun."

Steve gives him a hard look. "Alternative means only. Stuff I'm immune to in case it gets turned on me."

Bucky's expression falls. He disengages a little, running fingers through his hair. "Tasers," he guesses. "Tranq guns."

Steve nods. "Sonic tech, sometimes… pretty much anything that might give me an edge in a tight spot. I haven't been picky, I just…" He gestures. "Thought it was smart to switch up my M.O. so there wasn't some guy with Steve Rogers' build and appearance starting fights who also fought in Steve Rogers' style. Anyone who knows me knows I don't like weapons, so…" He shrugs, looking ashamed. "I told you I was being careful."

"Yeah," Bucky says, touching a thumb to Steve's unfamiliarly dark beard. "You did."

They stay there a minute, looking at each other. Steve languishes gorgeously in the soft afternoon light, his body somehow thick and lithe. Bucky's already put his mouth to every inch of him, tasted every drop of sweat his skin would offer; it's humid in Paris, summer seeming to come early just to greet their reunion with even more density than their devotion already creates. Bucky sits up with one wrist resting on a propped-up knee and thinks about blowing him again—God, the feeling of Steve's hands in all that hair had been so good, left him shaking and supplicant—but he settles on reaching a hand to him instead, committed to staying on task long enough to assess the danger of the situation at the very least. "So Marc turned out to be a bad customer."

"Let's say he came to have some questions." Steve takes Bucky's hand from where it tests at Steve's muscles and intertwines their hands, as though to impart both sincerity and comfort. "To him, that apparently justified breaking into my apartment."

"He was snooping."

"Mm. Fortunately I lock my phone in a safe when it's out of my sight, along with all my other sensitive materials. Keep the safe behind a false back in one of the closets behind a statue that most people can't move without a crane."

Bucky barks a laugh. "Beautiful."

"I had my tablet with me, obviously, so… he found nothing he didn't already know about. Saw fit to stay here and try to blackmail me about it anyway."

"Blackmail you... about nothing?"

"I'm packing a pretty considerable arsenal at this point, Buck. Drop the right info to the authorities…" He shrugs. "He guessed right that I was wanted. Maybe he put together that I was American and that I've only been in France since a few months after Steve Rogers died…"

Bucky frowns. Steve's grip on his hand tightens before he can say anything. "Bucky—whatever you're thinking—"

"You dealt with this guy?"

"He's dealt with."

"That's not what I asked."

"We exchanged words. I think he understood me." 

Bucky just shakes his head.

"Look—it's dealt with _for now._ I can't waste time thinking about it. I have finals."

"Finals!"

"They're important! If I'm gonna make this cover stick—"

Bucky waves a hand to silence him. "No, you're right. You should focus. Leave it to me."

Steve sits up. " _No_ ," he says firmly, looking Bucky dead in the eye.

"I won't _kill_ him," Bucky says, feigning innocence. "I'll just... make him wish he'd never been born."

"Don't," Steve says, still serious. "I mean it. I don't want you near this. It's not your mess; you have enough of a mess as it is. Remember how you don't exist to clean up after me?"

"This guy's harassing you. It would be my pleasure—nay, my _honour_ to bestow upon him the gravity of his error—"

"Listen to me." Steve grabs Bucky's jaw. "Leave it alone. I am asking you as a favour. It's been days and I haven't seen hide or hair of him. That's the way I want it to stay. Don't seek him out; if he comes back, I'll let you deal with it. Not before."

Bucky stares defiantly, but in the end Steve's actually right. "Fine," he cedes, falling back against the bed. Steve does the same, intertwining their hands again. Bucky ignores the self-satisfied smile on his face. "You swept the place for devices after he left, right?"

"Yeah, Buck. I'm not stupid."

"He plant any?"

"A couple. Made quick work of them, stripped the apartment just in case. Put in a couple bugs of my own in case he comes back."

"They high-grade?"

"Mine?"

"His."

"I don't think so. Middling, maybe."

"He seem institutional?"

"I mean, he's organized crime. Not _Hydra_ organized."

"Sure about that?"

"I think if he was Hydra, he wouldn't have bothered trying to blackmail me for additional info. He'd have just killed me, or at least taken me in. Wouldn't he?"

Bucky nods. It's sound enough logic. "What about CIA organized?"

"No. He might sell me out to the CIA, but I vetted him before even contacting him. If he is law enforcement, he is _deep_ undercover, like twenty years deep."

Bucky sighs, finally feeling something close to resolved on the situation. "Okay. I won't go after him unless he comes after you first. But I _do_ think you should find a new place to live."

Steve groans.

"You've been here three years already. That's too long."

"I don't have time."

"I'll do it," Bucky says. "I'll move everything, don't even worry about it. You focus on finals, I'll find you a place. You won't have to do a thing."

Steve stares at him, dubious.

"I'm serious. I gotta lie low for a few weeks anyway; it'll give me something to do while you're studying. If all I've ever done since you left is bring your security down, let me do one thing to build it back up. I'll find you a nice place, I swear. Closer to school."

"You can't promise that."

"I can. I got a knack for these things, remember? So long as you trust me to know where you live…"

"Yeah," Steve deadpans. "It's me who has the problem with exchange of personal information."

"C'mon, Rogers. If you won't let me _address_ this man's boundary issues, at least let me help you give him the slip once and for all."

Steve studies him, his eyes their usual striking blue. Then he nods, gently, stroking an affectionate thumb across Bucky's hand.

Bucky smiles. Steve rolls over him again, taking Bucky's face in hand, sliding their noses close, brows touching. God, but Steve's everything. Bucky shuts his eyes and feels every inch of him: hands, lips, the length of his dick. 

He kisses Steve slowly, in no particular hurry, sinking thick into the honey of adoration. "Shame I never got to meet the Sasquatch," Steve murmurs, palm against Bucky's only barely-stubbled jaw.

Bucky huffs a laugh. "Gonna have to cut my hair short, too. Actually style it. Horrors."

"Reverse sideburns?" Steve asks, dragging his fingers up from Bucky's temple. "You could build a brand."

"New Instagram sensation BurnedSides?"

Steve barks a laugh, burying his face in Bucky's neck. Bucky grins, dragging a palm across the short bristles of Steve's hair. "Not this short."

"You sure? I can buzz it for you."

"Try and we'll see how you fare getting tossed out a fourth-story window."

"That? Barely a drop."

Bucky shakes his head. "Your little escapades making news? Reckless brick wall saves children, puppies?"

Steve's smile widens. For a second he doesn't say anything. "Okay," he offers finally, propping his head up with one hand. "You might not find this funny, but I think it kind of is."

"Uh oh."

"The papers kinda gave me... a title." Steve starts snickering before Bucky can even react. "It's not that funny in English, which I guess would be... Parkour Vigilante?"

" _Parkour Vigilante_?"

"But in…" He snickers again. "In all the french papers, the word order's reversed, so it's _Vigilante Parkour,_ which is _much_ funnier to me, I don't know why." Bucky's not sure what to say. "But then," Steve goes on, still halfway choking on laughter—"maybe because they're using an English word instead of French for some reason—sometimes they drop the 'Vigilante' and just start calling me Mister Parkour—"

" _Mister_ Parkour."

"—which, it being in French, is _Monsieur Parkour_ —"

"Jesus Christ. You orchestrated this."

"—and the abbreviation of 'monsieur' is just the letter M, so over time the papers have just started referring to me as M. Parkour. Which is—"

"This can't be true," Bucky says, shaking his head. "You're making this up."

"— _so_ funny to me, Bucky, I don't think I have the heart to put a stop to it."

"They just made your cover name for you."

"It's beautiful. I couldn't have come up with a better one."

Bucky licks his lips against a grin. "Brooklyn Sasquatch and Vigilante Parkour," he says dryly. "They should make a movie."

"Maybe we should be seen in public together," Steve muses. "You grow your beard back, I'll wear my tac gear, balaclava and all. We'll stop for ice cream…"

"Pose at la Tour Eiffel..."

"Tandem bicycle." Steve smiles. "You'd get your Instagram following back."

"I'd double it. Christ." Bucky horrifies himself by actually thinking on it. "Tell you what. When you're ready to burn Vigilante Parkour, I'll steal another jet, we'll do this for real. Make ourselves urban legends. Nobody will care what happened to Captain America—either one of us—when Brooklyn Sasquatch and Vigilante Parkour did a world tour together and then disappeared forever. Hide in plain sight, cause a distraction, disappear. Undercover 101."

"Really?"

"I can't wait."

Steve grins, slow. He pushes himself higher until he's leaning his body over Bucky's completely again. "Kinda love being undercover all of a sudden."

"Yeah," Bucky says. "All the instability, expense, paranoia, being apart…"

"But… the hilarity."

"Sometimes I ask myself why I got into this assassin gig," Bucky says, entwining their limbs, "and then I remember: it's for the laughs."

"Don't forget the social media fame."

"You know me so well, Rogers," Bucky replies against Steve's lips. "Feeding the cogs of corporate America with the distribution and sale of my personal information is what gets me up in the morning."

"You know, I'm starting to think _CAPTAIN AMERICA HAS A GUN_ had a point about you," Steve says, frowning. "You're very political."

"If I am, it's entirely your fault."

"You always know just what to say," Steve murmurs, steeped with affection, and then he kisses Bucky stupid until he abandons the drive for conversation once and for all.

  



End file.
